Educational Media Reviews Online

Brandy Burre, a classically beautiful woman, who is a dead ringer for Anouk Aimée in her prime, is the subject of Actress, an intriguing documentary that flirts with fiction. It was co-produced, directed, edited and photographed by Robert Greene, Burre’s suburban New York neighbor. The film deals with a 39-year-old woman coming to terms with finding that she does not have a place in either her relationship or in a career. It is an exploration of an incredibly absorbing and fascinating mid-life crisis because the actress in question is, in fact, both subject and object of the film.

Burre, who obtained an M.A. in acting, had a 15-episode recurring role on the acclaimed television show The Wire from 2004 to 2006, she also had a bit part in a film in 2004. Pregnancy and a relationship made her abandon acting and choose motherhood in the town of Beacon, a 60-mile commute north of New York City, where her boyfriend owns/runs a craft beer restaurant/bar. Her choice to leave acting at that time also involved not having to deal with the stress of rejection in demeaning auditions. Additionally, she was tired of having to accept the gender inequality that at the age of 27, she says, (she would actually have been 30-32 at this time if her published birthdate is correct), she was playing a character who was supposed to be the same age as the mid-thirties men on The Wire. Regardless of the accuracy of her age, her statements are, in fact, true. Ageism is still rampant in the film and television industry and actresses who are 40 go to auditions to play characters that are 50 or older. Male stars, well past middle age, are paired up with women in their twenties and no one blinks. No one has ever blinked: No one ever thought it was odd that Audrey Hepburn at 28 would be romantically paired with a thirty-years-her-senior Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon (1957), or that at 25 she would be paired with Humphrey Bogart, also about thirty years older, in Sabrina (1954). But that isn’t half the story, of course. Female actors must also endure a decrease in the number of roles that they can play, and the magic number for this appears to be “35”. After that age, there are fewer parts to be had, and actresses have awkward periods where they are not quite old enough to be a grown man’s mother but they are considered too old to be his girlfriend, even if he is the same age. Knowing these facts, we watch the documentary, glued to the screen and wonder about motivations, both on the part of the filmmaker and friend of the subject, and of the subject herself. Burre walked away from acting at precisely the time she should not have in terms of the critical moment to make a real name for herself in the acting world and she knows this. Something interesting would probably have come up after her stint on The Wire and it could have potentially cemented her position as a leading lady. So, as a comeback of sorts, was this film intended as a kind of demo reel to jump start her future work as an actor? Is she trying to get a reality show with the help of her neighbor? Viewers have become very cynical and tend to question motivations. Yet, Robert Greene got something so poignant and touching from this woman that we can’t seem to forget her after the film ends. We want her to succeed, we want her to get acting jobs and we want to continue watching her. The audience stops caring about the motivations for making the film. At the very least, Greene has succeeded in providing Burre with a fan base for future endeavors.

As the film progresses, we can see that she undoubtedly loves her two adorable children, yet it is also clear that she battles resenting them for being the reason she stopped acting, although she appears to forget that dealing with rejection was also a big part of her walking away from that life. A new spark ignites as she watches scenes of herself in The Wire with her mother. Somehow, in her unhappiness about being excluded from her boyfriend’s restaurant plans and his work life in general, and becoming stir-crazy from staying at home playing the role of a housewife, she is led to stray to both the acting world and another man. She is vulnerable, scared and drinks too much but she still puts herself “out there”. What will become of her, we cannot help but wonder at the end of the film, after her boyfriend moves out, she shares custody of the kids and gets herself back into the acting world.

The director combines scenes where Brandy Burre acts the part of a character based on herself with other scenes that appear to be more like ones we are accustomed to watching in documentary films. The scene in question is very formal with voice-over and is specifically lit. Burre plays a beautiful, sensuous woman, washing dishes in an apron. This staged scene, which we come back to a few times, is clearly the formalized “melodrama” of the film, but there are curious elements in the rest of the film that point to fabrications and the breaking down of Cinema vérité’s written and unwritten rules: Burre very noticeably flubs a line near the beginning of the film in a scene with the kids, which led me to question whether there was a script or outline they were working from, or whether she was asked to do the scene again since something went wrong in an earlier take and the director wanted a better version of reality resulting in using the shot with the flubbed line because it was better than the previous take. Was the scene with the other man at the waterfront done later and inserted for effect? Why was digitally-added snow found in numerous shots of the outdoors? Was it to produce seamless transition sequences where some shots may have included actual snowfall while others did not? There are a number of fake things in this documentary and the question is how many fake things it takes to tip the scale from documentary to fiction. All this is fascinating speculation and adds to the layers of the film. Where does documentary end and fiction begin?

The only issue I had with the film was the cinematography. Robert Greene should have perhaps entrusted the camera to one of the other people credited at the end of the film. I suspect those were the individuals who, among other things, shot the transition scenes which include some beautiful nature shots interspersed throughout the film. A cinematographer creates a visual atmosphere but Greene shot the interiors with a camera that really does not do well in low light. He decided not to do normal documentary film lighting and it actually looks as if he were only using available light as the interiors are mostly dark, flat, and noisy (the digital equivalent of over-grainy for analog film). Even in the lit melodrama scene, the lighting clumsily flares the lens taking away from the scene. It would be very simplistic to excuse the cinematography, such as it is, by interpreting it as indicative of Burre’s inner turmoil, how she is no longer lit, leading to her desire to reclaim the light. The fact remains that an error was made in using a camera that cannot properly capture low light situations and then ignoring the results. Would the film have been more accomplished with improved lighting and cinematography? I believe that it would, but despite the fact that we are often not able to discern Brandy Burre’s beautiful face and her reactions clearly, this film is still fascinating, compelling and highly recommended.