Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

I wonder how people who are actually conservative feel about it when they get depicted on the silver screen by actors we know to be liberal? I would imagine they approach it with deep cynicism. I often appreciate it when I see depictions of conservative people onscreen that seem to be nuanced, but for all I know the very type of people in the attempted depiction find it ridiculous at best and offensive at worst. God knows that’s how I would approach any famously right-wing actor depicting a liberal character. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, either. And when it comes to Stillwater, which I actually sincerely enjoyed, Matt Damon’s lead performance as an Oklahoman construction worker living temporarily in France often came across, even to me, as less an authentic portrayal than a guy cosplaying a Midwestern conservative.

At least the performance is understated. Damon certainly goes in a new direction here, as a man obsessed with getting the evidence necessary to exonerate his grown daughter serving prison time for murder, in Marseille.

There are shades of Amanda Knox here, obviously. If we want to say this is based on that story, it’s loosely based at best. “Inspired by” is probably more appropriate, with some expected themes of how Americans are viewed by Europeans. Damon’s character, Bill Baker, meets a woman named Virginie (Camille Cotton) and her little girl, Maya (an excellent Lilou Siauvaud), forging a close relationship with them after Virginie offers him help in translating as he goes in search of evidence. Even though he’s been told by lawyers that there is no hope for reopening his daughter’s case.

She’s been in prison five years already, one of the many unusual choices in storytelling here by writer-director Tom McCarthy (Spotlight). The truth of the circumstances that landed Allison in prison are meted out very sparingly, and never through any flashbacks—a wise choice, as it keeps us in the present-day of the storytelling. By the time the story starts here, Allison is already approaching probation, and is closer to release than she is to having been sentenced. As such, Stillwater becomes less of a mystery, although there remain elements of that, than a drama about how Bill and Amanda forge, maintain, or lose relationships in their lives.

The casting of Abigail Breslin, now 25, as Allison is an inspired choice. Matt Damon clearly immersed himself into the role of Bill with great effort, learning an Oklahoman accent, gaining weight. Breslin hardly had to do anything physical; she clearly fulfills the promise of her precocious performances as a little girl and has maintained her talent, which in contrast to Damon is the most memorable thing about her performance. That said, she has grown into a look that makes her a very convincingly progressive daughter of a stoic Midwestern man who prays before every meal.

There’s a lot to love about the relationship between these two in Stillwater. It has plenty of complications, but literally none of them have to do with her being a lesbian and his being conservative. in fact, he seems to accept her as who she is by default. Allison’s sexuality is really never brought up as any kind of “issue,” and in fact the overtly sociological details involve racism, and particularly anti-Muslim sentiment, in France. Bill, for his part, is a recovering addict, a guy who fucked up so many times as a father that Allison can’t trust him. They have other issues. People forget that liberal people, and decent conservative people, actually do exist in red states, and it’s nice to see a movie make the rare decision to reflect that. It’s even nicer to see a lesbian character for whom her sexuality is truly incidental, especially within this context.

I found myself surprisingly taken by the plotting of Stillwater, which takes no hard swings and yet makes many subtly subversive choices, particularly in contrast to typical storytelling in cinema. There is one turn of events involving Bill and a young man he considere a suspect, which gets a little close to the much more dramatic vigilantism in a movie like Prisoners (which took those hard swings, and was still a better movie). Bill gets himself in over his head in a way he would never plausibly get out of it in the real world, and then he gets a too-convenient pass, with some critical questions that are just left unanswered. In a way, that’s maybe the hard swing Stillwater should have taken, but still didn’t. This movie is otherwise too straightforward to say it has any genuine plot twists, but it does offer a solution to the central mystery that is comfortably unpredictable.

In any event, with Stillwater, the value is in the details, particularly with these Americans immersed in French culture, the people around them making their own assumptions about them. The reminisce about the media having been “ferocious” about Allison’s case. Arguably the most fascinating thing about this movie is that the whole story takes place in the aftermath of, rather than before or during, the most consequential event in these people’s lives. Somehow, it works.

Overall: B

Opens July 30.