Elizabeth Moss as Becky Something

Director Alex Ross Perry brings to the screen frenetic energy swaddled in pain, delusion, and despair in his film Her Smell. Starring Elizabeth Moss of The Handmaiden’s Tale, Her Smell charts in five acts the rise and fall and rise of an all-girl punk band called Something She. Becky Something, played by Moss with chaotic intensity, is the leader of the band.

Her Smell is noisy and cantankerous and messy, to the point of viewer exhaustion. The usual suspects that plague these bands? They’re all there: Drug abuse, verbal abuse physical abuse, member betrayals; the manager who wants to throw himself off a cliff; the self-destruction, the distressed child, the unsung ex-husband who patiently waits for his ex-wife’s recovery, the “OMG where is she? Is she ready to go on?” moments; then the full mental breakdown and … recovery – if you could call it that.

The film unfolds in the 1990s, when the punk rock scene was all the rage. Something She is well-received by the patrons at the club called Her Smell. At times the story breaks into cinematic pieces, and cinematographer Sean Price Williams gracefully moves to put them all back together. Moss interprets Becky Something as an abrasive raptorial bird who opens her wings to isolate herself from bandmates. The band members of Something She hang on by a thread to keep the band going in spite of their fear of collapsing. Dan Stevens plays Danny, her tolerant ex-husband who shields their daughter from her mother’s destructive ways. It is clear that celebrity and stardom have engulfed Becky into its vortex, and there is nothing pretty about it! Nothing.

What is missing from the cinematic narrative, however, is the reason for Becky’s slide into self-abuse. What happened? When and how did her identity fracture? Becky’s mother, Ania, played with maternal angst by Virginia Madsden, offers no answers. Interesting to Her Smell are the behind the scenes cinematic portraits of those persons who are trapped within the quagmire of recording studios and encased in halls offstage walled in by concrete. They are always on the brink of being swallowed whole by the celebrity for whom they are paid to endorse. Hmmmm … feels like a satellite of hell!

This film is most tedious to watch; it’s like taking in cinematic poison. You will be hard-pressed to make an investment in the characters, and Becky’s redemption is too little, too late.

Her Smell plays through May 16 at the Ross Media Arts Center in Lincoln.

Also showing at the Ross are The Mustang and Sunset.