Movie Review – The Pretty One

The Pretty One is a limited release film written and directed by Jenée LaMarque. Appropriate to the family theme of the film, she collaborated on the soundtrack with her husband (Julian Wass) on this coming of age story that involves a pair of identical twins, both played by Zoe Kazan. The actress does a great job developing two characters that share only their appearance, but have personalities that are more akin to strangers than to sisters.

A relationship develops between one of the sisters and her neighbor, played by Jake Johnson. There is strong chemistry between the lead actors and this makes their interactions thoroughly believable. On the surface, we see the many joys and challenges of a couple in love, but below the surface this film explores much deeper issues. The viewer is asked to consider how we are perceived by, and how we want to be perceived by others. The movie employs an interesting technique to bring those questions to the surface, but to avoid giving away too much of the storyline, I will say no more.

The film is far from perfect, but the director and cast do an admirable job of balancing dramatic and comic scenes, which in a few specific areas could seem entirely inappropriate. If you find the questions asked in the film interesting, I encourage you to see this movie before you read other reviews that may reveal too much information about the storyline, and as a result, reduce the impact of the film.