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It's a sign of progress that the great  Isabelle Huppert can emerge from her acclaimed performance in " Elle " with enough industry clout to land a hambone villain role in a project that probably wouldn't exist if she hadn't said yes to it. "Greta," a thriller directed and co-written by Neil Jordan (" The Crying Game "), is a 2019 update on a popular sub-genre from a specific period in film history, the '80s and '90s. It was a time when multiplexes never lacked for preposterous thrillers about law-abiding people menaced by agents of chaos who had sympathetic backstories but were so cruel and frightening that the audience could cheer their deaths without guilt. " Fatal Attraction ," "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle," " Unlawful Entry ," Martin Scorsese's remake of " Cape Fear ," " Basic Instinct ," and other movies in this vein were godsends to skilled actors looking for a chance to cut loose and have naughty fun. From the looks of it, Huppert had a grand time playing the title character in "Greta," a film that could have been released in the era of MTV veejays and VCRs. 

The story begins when young Frances McCullen ( Chloë Grace Moretz ), a single New Yorker who shares a stunning apartment with her rich pal Erika ( Maika Monroe ), finds a designer handbag on a subway car and returns it to its owner, Greta Hideg. Greta is a French-born piano teacher and recent widow who lives by herself in a gorgeous old house, playing Chopin and Beethoven. It just so happens that Frances recently lost her own mother. The women settle into a facsimile of a mother-daughter relationship (a dynamic that Jordan has explored in other films, notably " Byzantium "). Frances even helps Greta adopt a dog.

Of course this movie wouldn't be billed as a thriller were Greta a nice but lonely woman just looking for companionship. Sure enough, Frances figures out that Greta is a malevolent figure who has lured people into this kind of trap before—but by the time she's done the mental math, it's too late to save herself. Greta sinks her claws in deep. And Huppert gets the chance to cut loose and give the sort of impish, over-the-top, at times brazenly self-regarding performance that let Jack Nicholson buy himself extra houses.

In addition to being a sophisticated portrayer of unconventional relationships, Jordan is a genre buff. He debuted with a werewolf picture (" The Company of Wolves "), manages to work horror elements into non-horror films. He loves to stage jump scares, and film sensuous images of mangled flesh and spilled blood. "Greta" has plenty of that. But because all the characters save Greta are thinly drawn (including Frances, a distressed ingenue that not even Moretz can save), they might all feel a touch mechanical if Huppert weren't in there, pirouetting her way through the script. She's always looking for the odd detail that'll make a moment pop, like the absentminded, sing-song tone she takes as she tells Frances, "A woman is known by her shoes and her gloves, and we are nothing if not ladies!" or the way she literally dances as she's doling out violence, the camera dipping to floor-level to capture her footwork. 

This is a ridiculous film, knowingly so. It's hard to say who winks at the audience more often, Jordan or Huppert. As in other movies in this vein, Greta absorbs physical punishment that would incapacitate a team of Clydesdales and keeps right on coming—but it's a lot of fun, especially at the end when the plot's noose tightens, drawing in supporting players (including a police detective played by longtime Jordan repertory company member  Stephen Rea ) and transforming Greta's home into a de facto haunted house, filled with secrets and traps. There's a moment near the climax where Jordan darts close to Huppert's face during a moment of extreme horror and you notice a smirk tugging at the corners of her face, paired with a slightly trembling lip. It's the expression of a woman who can barely contain her laughter. 

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Greta (2019)

Rated R for some violence and disturbing images.

Chloë Grace Moretz as Frances McCullen

Isabelle Huppert as Greta Hideg

Maika Monroe as Erica

Zawe Ashton as Alexa

Parker Sawyers as Gary

• Neil Jordan

Writer (story by)

Cinematographer.

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• Nick Emerson
• Javier Navarrete

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‘Greta’ Review: Isabelle Huppert as Sweet Surrogate Mom Turned Psycho Stalker

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‘Greta’ | Anatomy of a Scene

Neil jordan narrates a sequence from his thriller featuring chloë grace moretz and isabelle huppert..

I’m Neil Jordan. I’m the director of “Greta.” Frances, played by Chloë Moretz, is a waitress in this New York restaurant, and she’s being pursued by this woman, played by Isabelle Huppert, called Greta. She becomes this clingy friend/monster. One of the final straws of Greta’s attempts to invade Frances’s life is when she books a table at the restaurant she works. “Is there a problem?” “Yes. This woman has been harassing me and you need to ask her to leave.” “I’m afraid she has a reservation.” “What kind of service is this?” So we designed the restaurant specifically around this scene — the shape of it, the table lights, the pools of light from above, and the mirrors. We wanted an environment where the traffic of the waiters to and fro the tables was fluid. We would allow for these long, fluid kind of shots. Everything was designed to kind of ratchet up the humiliation of the central character, Frances. [music] “I’ll start with the crab bisque and a small green salad.” “Why are you doing this?” “Because we have to talk.” “I have nothing to say to you.” The clothes that the central character, Greta, wears was extremely important. We had a lot of discussion about the costume — the sophistication, the Frenchness of it. We managed to get a great costume from Karl Lagerfeld and Chanel. Those elements really were the scene, you know? I mean, Isabelle’s sophistication, her Frenchness. “If you say so. Cherie — “ “Do not call me that.” “[speaking french]. It’s what you are, my darling.” And the fact that, at a certain point, she reveals herself to be Hungarian. - [speaking hungarian]. Because she is a character with about four different layers to her, and I suppose this is a scene where all those layers are expressed. She knows how to order a wine. She knows how to hold a table in a restaurant. She knows how to embarrass a maître d. At a certain point, she kind of reveals herself to be an absolute monster, which is the fun of the scene, which is the center of the character, really. You know, this monster that sits behind this Frenchness, this sophistication, this kind of politesse. [music] “The Chablis.” “May I? Mm, a bit like you. Promises a lot, then disappoints.” “O.K.” “I deserve better.” [glass shattering] [gasping] It’s also a very physical scene. And in scenes like this, people can get hurt. “ — to us.” “Are you a child?” “No. You’re the child. You need to mature. You need a mother to hold you. You lost someone, and you are afraid to love. We both know its true.” “Don’t you dare talk to me about my mother.” “Darling, don’t you understand? She had to die. (SHOUTING) She had to die for us to meet!” So I had to set up an environment and a context whereby she could express herself physically, throw things around, struggle with grown men. So, I mean, in this scene, the fact that she felt physically safe was tremendously important to her and to the scene itself, I suppose. [music] “Leave me alone!”

By A.O. Scott

• Feb. 26, 2019

If you see a suspicious package or activity on the train or the platform, please tell a police officer or an M.T.A. employee. What New York subway rider doesn’t know that? A young woman named Frances McCullen — a recent transplant from Boston, as if that’s an excuse — who finds an expensive-looking handbag on the Lexington Avenue local and pays dearly for ignoring mass transit protocol. “Greta,” the movie about what happens to Frankie (as she’s called), can stand as a cautionary tale for straphangers. If you see something, say something.

Having seen it, I will say that “Greta,” directed by the always-estimable Neil Jordan ( “The Crying Game,” “Michael Collins,” “The End of the Affair” ), is a mixed bag, a skillfully executed psychological thriller with not quite enough in the way of psychology or thrills to be as disturbing or diverting as it should be. And maybe not enough Isabelle Huppert , either, though she is the major and almost sufficient reason to bother with the film in the first place.

Huppert plays Greta Hideg, the owner of that purse and a bunch more like it, accessories that she uses to lure young women like Frankie to her house in Brooklyn. Frankie (Chloë Grace Moretz), whose mother has recently died and who is semi-estranged from her father (Colm Feore), finds in the older woman a mirror for her own loneliness. Greta has lost a husband and a dog, and misses her daughter, who she says is off in Paris studying music.

Greta’s empty nest is filled with Chopin and Liszt and strange noises from behind the piano, and she and Frankie strike up what seems to be a warm intergenerational friendship. Frankie’s roommate, Erica (Maika Monroe, supplying a superfluous but satisfying jolt of bratty energy), thinks it’s a little weird, and of course she turns out to be right. The lady has a cupboard full of identical handbags! Then she goes full stalker, flooding Frankie’s phone with texts and voice mail messages and showing up at the restaurant where Frankie works.

Frankie is probably too young to have seen “Fatal Attraction,” “Single White Female” or the other madwoman-in-the-city movies of the ’80s and ’90s. “Greta” updates the genre (people have smartphones now) without improving on it much, though the maniac-mommy twist is an interesting wrinkle, adding a sinister fairy-tale element to the modern setting. (It’s hard to hear the title without thinking of Hansel and Gretel, and Greta is distinctly witchy.) But the plot moves a little too quickly from intriguing ambiguity to straight-up terror, without giving Moretz and Huppert enough time to explore the kinks in the characters’ relationship or the temperamental contrast between them.

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Greta review: Isabelle Huppert gives one of her most terrifying performances in this horror-thriller

On one level, this is a psychodrama about grief, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Neil Jordan; Starring: Isabelle Huppert , Chloë Grace Moretz, Maika Monroe. Cert 15, 99 mins

Veteran French actress Isabelle Huppert gives one of her most terrifying performances in Neil Jordan’s overwrought horror-thriller. She hits notes of malevolence that not even Bette Davis could reach in her later roles as psychopathic nannies or twisted old movie stars. As ever with Huppert, less is more. Her restraint and uncanny poise make her character seem all the more menacing.

Huppert plays Greta , a lonely, middle-aged widow living in New York. Greta has a novel way of meeting people. She will pretend to leave her handbag on the subway. It has her identity card and address inside it. Some naive do-gooder will always pick it up and return it to her. That is when she strikes, inserting herself into the life of a new victim and refusing to be removed.

Frances (Chloë Grace Moretz) is a young woman from Boston working as a waitress in Manhattan and living in a loft apartment with her best friend Erica (Maika Monroe). When she finds the bag, Frances is in an emotionally vulnerable state anyway. Grieving for her recently deceased mother, she clings to Greta. As she tells the older woman, she is known by her friends for her loyalty. She is like chewing gum – she “sticks around”. These remarks take on a very ironic resonance as Greta attaches herself to her and simply won’t let go.

In its own macabre way, the film is often funny. Greta has a tendency to play Liszt on the piano at the film’s most climactic moments. There is something comic about her extreme detachment. She is likened to Cruella De Vil but, as portrayed by Huppert, she is a very chic continental version of the celebrated villainess. Even when she is stalking and harassing her prey, she looks strangely elegant in her long coat and dark glasses. She can be clonked on the head with a heavy object or even mutilated but will never lose her sangfroid. In restaurants, she has a wonderfully high-handed way of dealing with the waiters and complaining if the wine doesn’t meet her standards. She can even throw a full-blown tantrum without losing her composure.

Jordan uses Frances’ wisecracking flatmate to help relieve moments of extreme tension. When matters are at their most fraught, Erica (played in ebullient fashion by Monroe) will always make some sarcastic observation to lighten the mood.

Greta starts in a relatively muted way but becomes ever more lurid. Director and co-screenwriter Neil Jordan is delving into the realms explored in Asian horror movies like Takashi Miike’s Audition or Park Chan-wook’s revenge films.

Looking as doleful as ever, Stephen Rea, who starred as the soulful saxophonist in Neil Jordan’s debut feature Angel way back in 1982, features here as a very dishevelled and melancholic private detective.

The irrational actions of some of the characters in Greta can be infuriating. This is one of those movies in which the protagonists seem determined to put themselves into harm’s way. When their tormentor is down, they will never apply the final blow. That means she keeps on coming back.

The screenplay (by Ray Wright and Jordan) withholds the background information which might have helped the film to make more sense. We learn very little until late in the film about where Greta comes from or what is driving her increasingly psychopathic behaviour.

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On one level, this is a psychodrama about grief. Frances is so traumatised by the death of her mother that we half suspect she has conjured up the demonic Greta in her imagination. There are times when Greta appears to have near supernatural powers. Frances simply can’t get away from her. However, it is also made very clear that Greta is a flesh and blood character who takes a perverse pleasure in inflicting physical and psychological harm on her victims. She is not very nice to dogs either.

In its lesser moments, the movie descends into high camp but the diva-like performance from Huppert gives it an edge that most trashy B movies lack. The French actress has made relatively few English-language films since starring early in her career in Michael Cimino ’s ill-fated Heaven’s Gate . This is one reason why Greta should be cherished in spite of its excesses and eccentricities. It’s a reminder of just what Hollywood lost when Huppert turned her back on the US studios all those years ago.

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‘Greta’ Film Review

Greta is a nail-biter of a psychological thriller with a heavy dose of camp, tempered by excellent performances from its female leads.

Greta (Isabelle Huppert) accidentally leaves her handbag on the subway, and Frances (Chloë Grace Moretz), being a kind soul, returns it to her. Greta lives a life filled with loneliness. Her daughter has abandoned her, her dog has died, so has her husband, and she has noisy neighbors. This leads to the beginning of a beautiful, sweet friendship between a lonely old woman and the naive, innocent girl. They bond over their own separate losses, connecting, spending time together, cooking together, adopting a sad dog together—they even begin to dress alike.

Then, the sinister reality hits. Frances discovers a cabinet filled with purses identical to the one she recovered on the train, each labeled with a name and a phone number of another woman. Greta has done this before. This woman has taken in more than one girl, just wanting to mother them. But what has happened to them?

Frances desperately tries to avoid Greta’s increased interest in her, which transforms from care and worry into full-blown stalking. The police shrug her off because Greta’s just an old woman–what’s she going to do? But things spiral out of control and into some truly unnerving territory, as Frances just can’t shake Greta’s clutches. She’s “like chewing gum. She tends to stick around.” But Greta’s gum has lost its flavor and then gotten stuck on your shoe–not the good kind.

Greta’s impetus makes this film so tense. Hers is the scariest kind of crazy: she’s convinced herself that she’s right, acting for Frances’ own good. She’s overflowing with the desperation that comes with the bitterness of loneliness and abandonment. To fill the void in her life, she gaslights her victim (and those around her) and enacts Munchausen by proxy. And that’s just the beginning.

Isabelle Huppert is chilling—a French Annie Wilkes —and masterful. She’s earnest, shocking, desperately lonely, and surprisingly, believably dangerous. Huppert threatens to steal the show from our hero, which makes sense because she’s got top billing and the title role–but she’s delightfully mad and deliciously deadly. But that’s not to undercut Chloë Grace Moretz’s job here. Over the years, we’ve seen her in all sorts of roles, but she adequately sells the intensity and the horror of her situation. Again, another actress outshines her with just a bit more verve and nerve than our protagonist: Maika Monroe (from It Follows and  The Guest ) as Erica, Frances’ roommate. She’s funny and light–a good foil to the darker role that Moretz must play.

But let’s talk about some great, groundbreaking stuff here: how rare is it to have a 65-year-old woman as the fearsome villain serial killer? Even rarer, Greta features three female stars and no male romantic interest. Erica mentions a cute guy in one scene, but that’s not the central theme here. We’ve got women living together and fighting for life, saving one another (and, admittedly, one of them is trying to kill the other), but the point is that this film highlights the sheer humanity of its female characters–the good and the bad, the light and the dark.

I have to give it to Greta , it’s a tense, often terrifying slow burn. Director Neil Jordan pulls off more than one bait and switch, keeping us on the hook and waiting to see where he’ll take us next.

Article by Tyler Howat

Tyler Howat joined Ready Steady Cut in November 2017, publishing over 100 articles for the website. Based out of Wenatchee City, Washington, Tyler has used his education and experience to become a highly skilled writer, critic, librarian, and teacher. He has a passion for Film, TV, and Books and a huge soft spot for Star Trek.

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‘Greta’ Review: Isabelle Huppert Steals This Stalker Thriller

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

It’s irresistible whenever Isabelle Huppert plays someone dangerous (see her Oscar-nominated role in Elle ). As the title character in the English-language Greta, a thriller directed with mirth and malice by the Irish provocateur Neil Jordan, the great French actress is up to demented, delicious mischief. And Chloë Grace Moretz, doing nice with just the right hint of naughty, plays the innocent who’s encounter with Huppert’s mysterious Greta will change her life … and definitely not for the better. Intrigued? How could you not be?

Jordan ( The Company of Wolves, Interview With the Vampire ) is known for the tricks he hides up his sleeve, notably the sexual peekaboo of The Crying Game, which earned him an Oscar nomination as best director and the trophy itself for his screenplay. Greta isn’t on that level. Jordan, working from a script he conjured up with Ray Wright, is in it for suspense tinged with laughs. But with these two dynamo actresses front and center, this nail-biter keeps you riveted.

Moretz plays Frances McCullen, a young waitress recently moved to New York from Boston. Her roommate Erica (a live-wire Maika Monroe) does her best to coax her friend out of the sadness she’s been feeling since her mother died a year ago. But Frances basically keeps her head down and uses work to alleviate her depression. Until she meets Greta. Actually, she doesn’t meet the older woman … not at first. She sees Greta’s handbag, a green leather purse that has been left on the subway. Our good-girl heroine finds a home address and returns the bag to her. Greta offers tea and sympathy, as well as a mother figure to lean on. Two lonely people find each other. How sweet.

Not in this movie. At first, Frances ignores the thumping noises behind the walls in Greta’s Brooklyn carriage house, sounds that can’t be disguised no matter how loud she plays Liszt on her piano. “Remodeling,” says Greta with an insouciant shrug. Then the woman starts calling Frances incessantly. Let the stalking begin. The tension explodes when Greta visits her prey at her chic restaurant. Trying to maintain a false calm, Frances asks her customer, “How’s the wine?” Greta’s reply is chilling: “Like you, it promises a lot and then disappoints.”

Jordan stages this scene — the film’s best — with coiled intensity, and Huppert plays Greta’s public breakdown like gangbusters. What happens next deserves not to be spoiled, though the plot points unravel like Hitchcock for Dummies 101. The men of the piece — Frances’s widowed father (Colm Fiore) and a detective ( The Crying Game ‘s Stephen Rea) — are ineffectual. This fight is between two women. Mutual loneliness is a theme the film introduces and swiftly abandons in favor of horror movie tropes. Yeah, you’ve seen it all before. But Huppert pulls out all the funny-scary stops playing cat to Moretz’s mouse. And when the worm turns, fasten your seatbelts. Jordan squeezes the plot for every ounce of campy, disreputable fun. It could have been so much more. But with these two actresses going at it, who’s complaining?

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‘greta’: film review | berlin 2019.

Brazilian director Armando Praca's feature debut, 'Greta,' stars Marco Nanini as a male nurse who takes in a criminal so he can offer a hospital bed to a friend.

By Boyd van Hoeij

Boyd van Hoeij

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Gay nurse Pedro (veteran Marco Nanini) is way past retirement age but still gets himself to the hospital every day, where he takes pleasure in taking care of others. His avuncular instincts also have him look after his neighbor and friend, Daniela (Denise Weinberg), a transgender woman in late middle age whose permanent use of lipstick and blue eyeshadow can’t hide the fact she’s not entirely well. She has only one kidney left and suffers from chronic kidney disease, which leads to an unexpected hospitalization that throws Pedro for a loop because there’s not a single bed available. The Bottom Line They don't want to be alone — or not seen.

Never above giving anyone a helping hand, Pedro selects a good-looking patient from his ward, gives him a free handjob and some money for a taxi and subsequently offers the now-vacant bed to Daniela. But she refuses to stay at the men’s ward, which is understandable seeing how she’s likely fought all her life to finally be accepted and seen as a woman. 

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'divine love' ('divino amor'): film review | sundance 2019.

Indeed, Praca, who wrote the screenplay based on a play by Fernando Melo, doesn’t need to sketch in much of these characters’ backstories. Their actions in the present suggest not only a long history of trying to reach out and help one another, but also hint at past moments of pain that never really went away. Praca is aided immensely by the lived-in performances from Nanini, a renowned TV star in Brazil more famous for his comedy chops, and Weinberg, a cisgender actress recently nominated for an International Emmy for her role on the Brazilian series  Psi . Their characters’ rapport is more based on looks and body language than dialogue, and Praca knows just how to frame and shoot the frayed yet loving relationship of these two elderly queer people who might not be in love in the amorous sense but who, for all intents and purposes, are there for each other until death do them part.

That said, sometimes their characters need to compromise a little if they want to get ahead in life. So when a bloodied stranger is brought in at the hospital under suspicious circumstances, the supposedly morally upright Pedro helps to smuggle out the man who might be a criminal on the run from either a gang or the police. As a result, Daniela can take his bed in the men’s ward. The only problem is that the man in question, who calls himself Jean (Demick Lopes), still needs looking after, so Pedro takes him home.

This midsection is by far the film’s strongest, and Praca makes the most of the ambiguous rapport between Pedro and his charge, who is perhaps just over half his age. The uncertainty concerning their needs and motives allows the film to examine the nature of relationships and human behavior in ways that are fascinating and true. “Happiness isn’t always fun, Pedro,” Daniela tells him at one point. At first sight, this might sound enigmatic, but Praca and his actors manage to suggest that there are many reasons people come and often try to stay together, however incompatible they — or their motives — might be. A bedroom conversation between Pedro and Jean before the latter leaves is so full of naked feeling it becomes almost impossible to remember Jean is also a serious criminal, so thoroughly has he been humanized.  

Greta ’s last act isn’t quite as strong, as Praca somewhat clumsily tries to wrap up most of his storylines. There’s a scene of gay lovemaking between two hot-and-bothered, in-the-prime-of-their-lives supporting characters that will please queer audiences for its laissez-faire attitude toward nudity and erections but that has no real narrative necessity. It is all the more jarring because the casual-feeling nude scenes between Pedro and Jean, with their bodies showing the ravages of age or their tough lives or both, are much more telling and touching in this respect. (One assumes Daniela’s body is similarly marked by her life, but it is thankfully mostly kept offscreen, thus avoiding reducing trans issues to matters of the body.)

A scene at a nightclub involving Daniela also feels like it belongs in a movie from a different era, a once-obligatory stop that doesn’t add all that much to this particular story, which registers as more modern in its storytelling approach. And more in general, Daniela’s storyline functioned as a starting point that draws the viewer in early on but gets watered down too much as Jean and Pedro’s relationship takes center stage. One thing that is noteworthy about Daniela is the casting: Praca has taken an unusual approach to the debate about how to cast transgender roles and actors. Here, Weinberg is a cisgender actress playing a transgender woman, though there’s a small but crucial role for transgender actress Gretta Sttar as a cisgender woman in the film’s closing scenes. 

The immensely talented, Fortaleza-born cinematographer Ivo Lopes Araujo ( Tattoo ) shot  Greta  on the digital Arri Amira camera, though it looks like beautifully textured 16mm, especially in the film’s frequent penumbral scenes, recalling the glories of celluloid in another nod to Garbo. The absence of a musical score adds a welcome verite edge.  

Production companies: Carnaval Filmes, Segrado Filmes, Mozambique Audiovisual Cast: Marco Nanini, Denise Weinberg, Demick Lopes, Gretta  Star Writer-director: Armando Praca  Producers: Joao Vieira Jr, Nara Aragao, Armando Praca Executive producer: Mauricio Macedo  Director of photography: Ivo Lopes Araujo Production designer: Diogo Costa Costume designer: Thais de Campos Editor: Karen Harley Venue: Berlin International Film Festival (Panorama) Sales: M-Appeal

In Brazilian Portuguese 97 minutes

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