Movies don’t really hit me very hard typically, which might sound weird coming from a person who adores movies. It’s not that I don’t feel emotions while watching them; I tear up pretty frequently when I’m in the middle of a movie, or watching an emotional episode of a TV show. But usually, once a movie ends, it drifts from my mind. Even the movies that I love.
It’s only been half an hour since I watched “The Color Wheel,” but the fact that I can’t stop thinking about it is unusual. The last time I experienced it, in fact, was watching “Listen Up Philip,” one of Alex Ross Perry’s other two movies (I’m not counting “Impolex,” which is relatively unseen, the one movie I’m not super interested in watching of his). But as I stood up after “The Color Wheel” ended, I felt like I was leaving my bedroom in a daze. I went downstairs and talked to my roommates, but whenever we were talking, there was this nagging in the back of my mind, this background rumination about the movie.
It’s really hard to ignore what happens at the end of “The Color Wheel.” Really, really hard. Writing this shortly after it ended, it’s pretty much the only thing I can think about. And, I mean, you can’t really blame someone for that. It’s an unusual ending, to say the least. But what’s most brilliant about the ending is that it’s not out of nowhere. The rest of the movie foreshadows it pretty heavily. I knew the twist beforehand, which is maybe why I picked up so much on the weird foreshadowing, but I don’t think that really diminished from the effect (though I do wonder how I would’ve reacted going into this cold).
Let’s start at the beginning, though. Colin (Perry himself) and JR (co-writer Carlen Altman) play a brother and sister in a very stereotypical-sounding indie comedy plot. They don’t get along very well, but Colin is the only one JR has left; she’s failed in her professional life, neglecting to find a job in broadcasting, and she’s failed in her personal life, breaking up with her pretentious professor boyfriend. So they have a fun sibling road trip where they bond and get over their differences.
Summing up the plot (prior to the ‘twist’ at the end, at least) tells next to nothing about the movie, though, because it’s so filtered through Alex Ross Perry’s uniquely strange style. I don’t even know how to describe it. It doesn’t have the same weird narrator as “Listen Up Philip,” but maybe it’s the beautifully grainy black-and-white cinematography. Maybe it’s the acting styles; Perry and Altman have kind of weird and unnatural line readings, and in any mainstream movie (like “Trainwreck” or something) it would come across as extremely stilted, but it just works here. And, like, it’s not genuinely terrible acting; they each have some flat readings, but they’re capable of doing really specific things well, like Altman’s mumbling imitations of Colin that are so perfectly sisterly. And their dynamic is so genuine and recognizable that they’re doing something right. Despite all of that, though, I’m not sure what makes this feel so specifically like an Alex Ross Perry movie (and how I’m able to conclude that after having only seen one of his). All I know is that he makes every other indie auteur seem unimaginative by comparison.
Having a really strong script also helps ameliorate the sketchy acting. I mean, I was laughing almost constantly, and this isn’t the kind of movie that I would expect that from (though I laughed pretty consistently at “Listen Up Philip,” too). The jokes often feel improvised, though the movie was 0% improvised; the dynamic between Perry and Altman is just so strong and the scenes have clearly been meticulously rehearsed, so everything feels natural, despite the unnatural delivery.
I expect the polarizing aspect of the movie comes from that undeniably weird ending. It’s no use hiding it any longer: the movie ends with Colin and JR, the biological brother and sister, having sex.
I honestly didn’t know how to feel while watching it. It was uncomfortable, and shocking, of course, especially the way the kiss/sex itself is shot, with the camera extremely tight on their faces, so that’s all you can see. You’re forced to experience it with them.
But it’s also weirdly natural. There have been so many scenes of strange sexual tension throughout the movie, something that undoubtedly would’ve puzzled me if I went in without knowing where it was all heading. There’s the scene when Colin buttons up JR’s shirt, mimicking “zip up my dress” scenes from countless rom-coms. There’s the fact that the motel owner makes them kiss to prove that they’re not faking being brother and sister. There’s JR walking in on Colin making out with his old childhood crush and freely interrupting it without apologizing or stepping out to leave them be. There’s the overall dynamic of playful antagonism that fits with the brother-sister relationship but which also feels oddly at home in a budding romantic relationship.
Even aside from the apparent sexual tension that has been simmering throughout the movie, though, there’s the emotional weight of it. It feels genuinely cathartic, in a way, because each of them has discovered that the other is the only person who will truly understand them. I doubt that in real life JR would find no one who’d actually be sympathetic to her lack of professional and personal success, but still, in the context of the movie, it’s fair that JR would feel like Colin is the only one who’s there for her.
To be honest, I wasn’t grossed out by Colin and JR having sex. That’s probably at least partly because incest is such an abstract concept for me, something that is so unusual and distanced from my reality that I can’t even imagine it and comprehend the inherent creepiness of it. You know how sometimes the most disgusting, gratuitous violence doesn’t have the most impact because it’s so far from your reality, whereas seeing someone stub their toe or get a paper cut can immediately trigger a visceral reaction? That’s kind of how I feel about incest.
Watching two siblings having sex didn’t gross me out, but that’s also because of how the scene progresses. If, after the party, Colin and JR simply got a hotel room and immediately started kissing and stripping each other’s clothes off, I’d be pretty perplexed, because even though there was sexual tension throughout the film, it would just feel wrong there. The reason it works is because of that glorious single-take shot where they lie down on the couch and just talk. It’s so natural. It’s so well-written. And you can feel it building towards this inevitable conclusion, equal parts horrifying and beautiful. You can feel it when the camera gets closer, zeroing in on their faces, only briefly panning to show her hand resting near his. You can feel it as her story goes on too long—her fantasy about Colin as a professor having a student with a crush on him drags out to almost ridiculous length, and it’s clear there is something else going on here than a woman happily imagining her brother having a successful life. There’s no way to describe the emotional impact of the scene without seeing it for yourself, but as I watched it, my heart started speeding up, then, oddly, it slowed down. The movie made me feel like this was how it was supposed to be.
Alex Ross Perry is the kind of writer-director who I absolutely love to find, because I can unconditionally say that I adore everything I’ve seen from him. I’ve only seen two movies, and he only has three notable movies overall, but just from those two, I think I’ve found an artist whose work embodies all the cinematic traits that I love and challenges me to discover new ones. I’m just glad he’s only 31 years old. I hope I’ll be watching him for years to come.
