Andrea Riseborough Shines in ‘Nancy’

This impressive first feature film by writer/director Christina Choe drops us into the murky world of the quirkily vacant Nancy (an aptly translucent Andrea Riseborough), a woman who may or may not have been kidnapped as a young girl reuniting with the couple she claims as her birth parents. An identity quest and a protagonist with a mysterious chasm in the center of her being are at the heart of the tale, reminiscent of Kyle Mooney’s brilliant turn in Brigsby Bear (minus the absurdist humor) or Tim Robbins’s pained role in Mystic River. Steve Buscemi appears, against type, as a skeptical and rational father figure, while the aggrieved mother (J. Smith-Cameron) invests in believing she has recovered her child. Riseborough is the cosmic, elusive star of the film, a rare character whose possible status as a compulsive liar keeps us guessing and wondering, like a walking suspended chord with a curious coif and alien gaze.