Few actors are as careful or interesting with the roles they pick as Aubrey Plaza has been over the last few years, eschewing the big comedies she cut her teeth on for slyer, slightly darker fare. In movies like Ingrid Goes West and Safety Not Guaranteed, Plaza’s twisty deadpan is deployed towards black comedic effect, with the end result being that you can never quite be sure whether or not she’s messing with you. And in this trailer for her latest role, that appears to be more the case than ever.
What is going on in the trailer for Black Bear? On the surface, it looks like a budding filmmaker (Plaza) heads off to a weekend getaway with a young couple (Christopher Abbott of It Comes At Night and Sarah Gado of True Detective) but the trailer makes it clear that there’s a lot more going on, and that initial setup may itself be a ruse.
According to the film’s plot summary, “the group quickly falls into a calculated game of desire, manipulation and jealousy, unaware of how dangerously convoluted their lives will soon become in the filmmaker’s pursuit of a work of art, which blurs the boundaries between autobiography and invention.” Well, that sure sounds interesting. It was written and directed by Lawrence Michael Levine and release somewhere on December 4.
