Review: Izzy Gets the F**k Across Town

Izzy Gets the F**k Across Town, the debut feature of writer-director Christian Papierniak, is no doubt a showcase for the amazing Mackenzie Davis, whose spiky portrayal of the film's hot mess of a heroine once again demonstrates why she is one of the best actresses of her generation.

After a rose-tinted, dream sequence, the film begins with Izzy waking up hungover in a stranger's bed. The stranger turns out to be a helicopter pilot (Lakeith Stanfield), who is as bewildered to find her there. After some easy banter, Izzy puts on her blood-stained catering uniform and sets out to head home. Except she's suddenly infuriated by the news that her ex-boyfriend Roger (Alex Russell) and her ex-best friend are about to celebrate their engagement later that day. After cursing the air blue, Izzy resolves to get the f**k across town, crash the engagement party and reclaim her man.

Here is where the film becomes truly problematic. Papierniak has Izzy pinball from one self-contained scene to another, all of which are wholly unnecessary and only seem to serve as filler until the last 30 minutes when the film finally snaps into focus. Perhaps Papierniak wanted to get his Pulp Fiction on in having Izzy interact with several oddball characters along the way, but very few, if any, of these encounters are interesting despite the presence of actors like Brandon T. Jackson, Alia Shawkat, Annie Potts, and Haley Joel Osment.

Papierniak would have been wiser to make the entire film about the strained relationship between Izzy and her older sister Virginia (Carrie Coon), with whom she used to be in a successful band. Their acoustic duet of Heavens to Betsy's "Axemen" is the highlight of the film, the two actresses conveying a lifetime's worth of emotions within those all-too-brief minutes. It may be that Papierniak thought a tale of estranged sisters might have been too conventional, yet it is no more so than his chosen story of a millenial realising that life doesn't always go your way. No amount of punk rock songs, split screens, and crazy camera angles is going to disguise that cliche.

Nevertheless, for all the film's many and exasperating failings, it is held together by Davis' unbridled, unpredictable and anarchic energy.

Izzy Gets the F**k Across Town

Directed by: Christian Papierniak

Written by: Christian Papierniak

Starring: Mackenzie Davis, Carrie Coon, Alia Shawkat, Alex Russell, Lauren Miller, Haley Joel Osment, Annie Potts, Lakeith Stanfield, Melinda McGraw