Kimberly Peirce is strongest when she gives an outsider time to want something ordinary. We rate her patient work with actors highly, though the care given to her central characters does not always reach the people around them.
Fi1m perspective
Watch the uncertainty in Chloë Sevigny’s face in Boys Don’t Cry (1999): Peirce gives us time to read a response rather than hurrying on. Her debut feature builds its force around the attraction between Brandon and Lana. With co-writer Andy Bienen, she makes Brandon’s wish to be wanted easy to understand, without turning him into a subject who needs explaining. We were moved by Sevigny’s uncertainty, because Peirce lets us feel the attraction even while we fear for Brandon. That makes the brutality difficult to bear.
Editors Tracy Granger and Lee Percy help by allowing the central performances time to develop. Nathan Larson’s music supports the romance, but Sevigny’s face tells us more than the score. The care is unevenly shared: the writing gives Peter Sarsgaard’s John Lotter and Brendan Sexton III’s Tom Nissen too little background. Bienen and Peirce leave those actors to supply distinctions that should have been clearer on the page. In a film so dependent on understanding why people behave as they do, the difference between the leads and the supporting cast is hard to ignore.
The move to the war drama Stop-Loss (2008), then to the remake Carrie (2013), kept her interest in people under pressure while changing the kind of story. Carrie, a remake of a Stephen King adaptation, is a less distinctive choice of material, with a familiar story that leaves less room for surprise. Alongside the features came television, with work on The L Word in 2006 and episodes of Halt and Catch Fire and Kidding.
Our larger reservation is how insistently she can confront cruelty. In Boys Don’t Cry, the severity sometimes becomes oppressive, threatening to reduce our concern for Brandon to fear of what might be done to him. Hilary Swank and Sevigny have made us care about more than that, and Peirce is better when she lets the central relationship hold our attention. Start with the debut for its love story, with a serious warning about the brutality.
Biography
Kimberly Peirce is an American filmmaker. She was born on 8 September 1967 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She studied at the University of Chicago, where she earned a BA in English and Japanese literature, and at Columbia University, where she received an MFA in film.
Peirce made her feature debut with Boys Don't Cry (1999), which she wrote and directed. The film starred Hilary Swank, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her subsequent features include Stop-Loss (2008) and Carrie (2013). She has also directed episodes of television series including The L Word, Halt and Catch Fire, TURN: Washington's Spies, Dear White People and P-Valley.
Peirce is a governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a National Board member of the Directors Guild of America.
