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Widow's Bay

 Critics are celebrating Matthew Rhys for his WTF fuck. It’s a great face—but all Rhys faces are great faces. Rhys in horror, yes, but also Rhys in discomfort, Rhys in frenzy, Rhys in anger. The Rhys of “Widow’s Bay” is sweaty, desperate, and needy—he is relatable. There must be a cost to exposing so much inner weakness. What a gift Rhys has.

 

In “Widow’s Bay,” Rhys has lied to his adolescent son: “Your mother died in childbirth.” In fact, the mother lived for years, and her schizophrenic letters are waiting to be discovered. Rhys learns that he can lift a curse on “his” island—to promote tourism, he just needs to murder a certain tainted citizen. (There is an elaborate story about a poisoned bloodline.) The problem is that the citizen in question is Rhys’s octogenarian receptionist—can he really bring himself to smother her with a pillow?

 

People have written about “Widow’s Bay” and its relationship to history. In America, we try to build industries on nostalgia—but, if we look closely, we notice that our history is appalling. (This explains the recent documentary “Natchez.”) As the receptionist reviews her old photos, she keeps a tally of all the male colleagues who “made a pass.” We’re soon in the double digits.

 

But my own main love is for the father/son relationship. Rhys’s son sees through Rhys. The son is constantly making calculations. Each failure he observes can be a source of leverage. Any particular scene between Rhys and his son is a symphony of passive aggression. There are long, complicated silences. We are many miles away from “Friday Night Lights.”

 

I look forward to more from “Widow’s Bay.”

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