neo-noir

In this neo-noir two-hander, Constanza, a Filipina immigrant, and Billy, a queer Texan youth, find themselves thrown together as they attempt to dodge law enforcement — both immigration officers and criminal investigators — and free themselves of sins from their homelands.

His 2001 neo-noir film “Mulholland Drive” is considered one of the filmmaker’s best, an exemplar of the practice of coaxing audiences into the theater of inscrutability and getting them comfortable before locking the door and leaving them there.

The novel is plainly an allegory for America’s current fraught moment, but it’s also a lively neo-noir filled with tough-talking detectives, politicos and journalists, and rife with canny plot twists.

He shines a similarly flattering spotlight on Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively here, though with a surprising genre shift, eschewing the broad comedy of his earlier work for this stylish, semi-Sapphic neo-noir thriller.

But just as her career seemed to slow down, she was cast opposite Gene Hackman in Coppola’s critically acclaimed neo-noir mystery “The Conversation.”