The greatest compliment you can give someone like Matt Damon, it seems, is to say that there are long stretches of "Stillwater" when you forget you're watching Matt Damon. The role certainly has a uniform for him to rely on — ball cap, sunglasses on the brim, goatee, plaid shirt tucked into his jeans — but it doesn't offer Damon any prosthetics to hide behind, no fake noses or old age makeup. Nevertheless, he renders himself unrecognizable at times through a mixture of body language, studied speech, and tiny details that really make the character feel so authentic. His shoulders alone deserve an Oscar nomination — Damon frequently buries his head between them, projecting a standoffish attitude to these foreigners while simultaneously bearing all the weight of a life built on bad choices.
Equally impressive — and perhaps battling the aforementioned Morgan Freeman struggle in equal measure — is Abigail Breslin. In some ways, it's always painful to see a child awarded an Oscar nomination, as she was for 2006's "Little Miss Sunshine." As wonderful a performance as it was, the recognition stripped her of anonymity and its accompanying versatility, all when she was barely ten years old. Now 15 years later, Breslin shows how far she has come as an actor, disappearing into the role of a world-weary young woman whose hope is vanishing before our eyes. It announces her as an adult talent worth watching, rather than a former child star.
This is a movie that has plenty of noise, but after the credits unspool the scene you're left with is the most quiet one: Bill, sitting on the couch alongside Virginie, with Maya at their feet. Without a single word, the three actors portray a newly formed family. As the audience watches, a series of glances and revealing grins depicts Maya, Bill, and Virginie each making the realization that at that moment, in silence, they have found happiness together — and their looks reflect the uneasy hope that it will last.
McCarthy shoots the film in a very unvarnished, pragmatic fashion that makes it almost feel like a documentary. Of course, no camera could follow this man into the moments we see in the film, but it nevertheless seems to disappear, revealing key moments of intimacy that feel like they're naturally unfolding before our eyes. The French backdrops depict a vicious underbelly behind the romance, and an uncaring populace content to lock up an outsider.
"Stillwater" is a fascinating film, one with the pretenses of a movie like Costa-Gavras' 1982 "Missing," the 2007 Angelina Jolie drama "A Mighty Heart," or the 2013 Denis Villeneuve thriller "Prisoners," but about something completely beyond simply finding someone. It feels more closely related to the most recent revival season of "Twin Peaks," in that it follows a detective on a seemingly well-intentioned quest, but is actually about a foolhardy man whose black-and-white ways may be clouding the realization that the battle was lost long ago, that the rules were changed on him without notification, and that he can never go back to the way things were.
