Dark Horse (2011)

Directed by: Todd Solondz

Overweight thirty-something Abe (Jordan Gelber) lives at home with mom (Mia Farrow) and dad (Christopher Walken), in whose property development business he also works.  At home he is a semi-reclusive collector of action figures, and at work an incompetent time-waster (only rescued from exposure by adoring older colleague Marie, played by Donna Murphy) while in both locations he is an overgrown teenager on a permanently short fuse, resenting everyone else’s success, snapping at every suggestion and externalising every shortcoming.

As the movie opens, however, we see him at a wedding, where he clumsily but persistently asks another non-dancer, Miranda (Selma Blair) for a date. We are even more surprised than he when the beautiful but distracted woman absent-mindedly agrees; but less astonished that she has forgotten all about it when the appointed Saturday comes around.  

Nevertheless, Abe perseveres and asks her to marry him which, a short time later, the evidently troubled Miranda agrees to do. Things begin to go awry at once: Abe consistently fails to deliver some spreadsheets urgently needed by his increasingly frustrated dad; Miranda is less than delighted at Abe’s suggestion that they begin married life in his childishly-decorated bedroom in his parent’s house; and when Miranda’s ex-boyfriend Mahmoud (Aasif Mandvi), who may or may not have given Miranda hepatitis, turns up, his plans begin to fall apart.  

At times of trouble, Abe is joined in his frequent in-head arguments by projections of those around him, most notably Marie, who increasingly manifests as a sexy femme-fatale, living in an outrageously well-appointed mansion.  When he is finally fired by his exasperated dad, things spiral out of control and, as Abe storms off, he is involved in a serious car crash, from which he awakes without legs, but with hepatitis.

Or does he?  Fully the last third of the movie seems to be imagined, and maybe most of it is (perhaps every time that Abe is articulate and confident, we are witnessing his imaginative state). The last scene even suggests that much of the story may have been imagined by Marie, though that is probably a reading too far.

While no one would expect Solondz to deliver a light comedy, this one is perhaps a little too light on the comedy, black or otherwise.  Characteristically painful to watch, it is one that does at least provoke reflection after one leaves the theatre.  Performances from the supporting cast members are all strong, with Donna Murphy kicking up a slinky storm as the fantasy version of Marie.  Hardly enjoyable in any conventional sense, but certainly fascinating.