An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (2012)
Review of An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (2012), directed by Terence Nance
I was interested in this movie for years, but it always ended up slipping my mind when I actually sat down to watch something for entertainment. I’d heard of Terence Nance because of his work with Random Acts of Flyness, although I had never actually seen anything from him before.
The extent of what I had heard of his work was that it leaned avant-garde and was something that was fresh and exciting to a lot of people, which, of course, had me interested. Avant-garde art and poetry tends to be my jam, so when I can find contemporary artists and makers with this genre, I get really excited.
Flash forward to 2021. I get a MUBI subscription with the student discount. I see his film An Oversimplification of her Beauty in the library of films that they’re offering that month, so, naturally, I press play. And this was a lesson in why you shouldn’t hype up films before watching them, because man do I have a lot of feelings about this film.
Onwards with the review!
After being stood up by a mysterious but hot girl, an artist contemplates what it means to be alive.
Nance’s background is in visual arts; he studied art at NYU. And that’s something you can clearly see as the movie continues to unravel and show itself to you—outside of the traditional aspects of filmmaking with live human subjects with animation. Though, at first, I honestly though I wasn’t going to make it through the first twenty minutes of the film.
The opening scenes and monologue sets us up for the tale that’s the overarching narrative. Nance is the star of the film, and as we watch him navigate New York City, the monologue voice-over tells us that he has been stood up by a girl.
What bothers me about this monologue is that it’s told in this flat tone of voice, nor is it dramatic enough to hold my attention longer than three minutes. But then it continues to drag on and on, which makes it almost unbearable to watch what’s going on.
I thought that it detracted from the story in a way that was so unnecessary; if we had the scenes just acted out, we’d give voice to the guy outside of the afterthoughts. I get that it adds mystery to the girl because we only get glances of her, but I was not having a fun time.
This is a film that is essentially a cause and effect. Because Nance is stood up by the girl, he begins to make up this grand narrative about feelings and how they hurt and are always there.
From the first initial breakdown of events, the film then goes into a time loop of sorts. We are told what has happened again, but this time, the details are changed. And then this happens again. And again.
Visually, this movie is stunning. The juxtaposition of the live action and the animation works really well and I wasn’t mad at that.
The film is a reflection about his relationships with people, and so this mashup of styles is interesting because it shows how memory works. Memory isn’t just a live-action take replicating exactly how things went down. Especially when you’re a creative person—you think in images, blasts, words, then the live-action take.
All in all, I honestly don’t have as much to say about this movie. Quite frankly, I wasn’t a fan of it. The monologues were too long and clunky, too uninteresting for me to pay attention. I only stuck through the movie because I knew I had to finish it, but the topic wasn’t very interesting to me as well.
Overall Thoughts
I think that Nance is a very talented artist and filmmaker, but the execution wasn’t just my taste for this movie. I think that it would definitely be someone else’s cup of tea, but I found parts of it to be just too grating, something that I couldn’t vibe with.
The visuals were indeed quite nice, the aesthetics pleasant to the eye and fitting to the story. The topic just felt like something I’d seen over and over again but not able land in a way that felt right to me. I’m probably just the wrong audience for this at the end of the day.
