Review: In 'I Used to Be Funny' Rachel Sennott Tops Herself

ATTENTION KURT LODER EDITORS: THERE IS A MANDATORY CORRECTION TO THE COLUMN FOR RELEASE FRIDAY, JUNE 7. IN THE FIRST GRAF, PLEASE REMOVE THE PHRASE "COWRITTEN BY SENNOTT HERSELF." PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING CORRECTED COPY. THANK YOU -- CREATORS

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Indie queen Rachel Sennott, with her pliable features and masterfully droll delivery, has the sort of fresh screen presence that Hollywood exists to embrace. In the four short years since her breakthrough in Emma Seligman's "Shiva Baby," Sennott has mainly been visible in small, artisanal comedies -- most of them millennial in outlook, helmed by women, and gay-inclusive as a matter of course. (One memorable example is last year's exceptionally funny high-school satire "Bottoms.") Now she's taken an impressive left turn into drama (well, dramedy) in "I Used to Be Funny," and once again she nails it.

The story is set in Toronto, where Sennott's character, Sam Cowell, is a regular on the alt-comedy standup scene. (Sennott paid her own standup dues in New York City, and some of her routines from that period have been preserved on YouTube.) Sam works as an au pair to pay the rent, but we don't know that at first because writer-director Ally Pankiw withholds all kinds of plot information throughout the picture. This is an effective strategy, for the most part -- it keeps us hooked on the story -- but it also requires the use of unexplained, disorienting flashbacks that sometimes leave us lost in time.

Still, the movie is compelling throughout (and, considering the subject matter, which is emotional trauma, quite funny, too). Complications arise from Sam's current nanny gig, tending a 14-year-old Brooke (Olga Petsa, making a breakthrough of her own). As the movie opens, we learn from a TV news report that Brooke has disappeared and is still missing. But Sam has just had a distressing visit from the girl, and when she tells this to her two roommates, Paige (Sabrina Jalees) and Phillip (Caleb Hearon), they counsel her to contact the police -- "even though ACAB, obviously," Paige says with automatic disdain.

Slowly and circuitously, we learn things. Brooke's mother is seriously ill, and her father, Cameron (Jason Jones), a police officer, brought Sam in to supervise and be a friend to his daughter. (This relationship, built on growing trust and affection, is the glowing emotional centerpiece of the movie.) Sam sort of sympathizes with the standoffish Cameron ("I don't think he's ever talked to a woman in a hoodie before," she says), while Philip tries to look on the bright side of Brooke's disappearance. ("She's probably loving the missing-person posters," he says. "They used a selfie. She looks great.")

The town in which the story plays out is as deceptively unthreatening as a David Lynch suburb, and as in Lynch's world, there are ugly threats in unexpected places. In one uneasy scene, Sam makes the acquaintance of two of Cameron's cop buddies; over the course of a couple of beers, one of them pulls out a phone and calls up a video of one of Sam's standup gigs, in which we see her telling an appreciative crowd, "If you're not having rough sex, are you having sex?" The mood of the scene instantly becomes ominous.

Slowly, we realize something awful has happened. It has to do with Brooke's disappearance and with Sam's sudden inability to perform onstage. Overall, the movie illuminates the way blameless people can be so thoroughly undone by awful things beyond their control.

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