Cody Fern's 'Closing Night' Stars Paulson, Watts, Wiest — SkimNews
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- Cody Fern directed 'Closing Night' as his first feature, co-writing it with Dylan Bostick, positioning the film in a tradition of matrilineal melodrama centered on anguished women.
- Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts, and Dianne Wiest star as Sandra, April, and Diane — estranged sisters and their mercurial mother — whose decades-old family rupture hinges on Theo (Toby Wallace), the son April raised alone.
- Sandra's Broadway performance ends abruptly when she collapses onstage and receives a life-altering diagnosis that attacks her memory, lending new weight to the film's fixation on grudges and buried trauma.
- The film shifts register from lively dark comedy in its first two acts to 'total despondency' in a tearjerker finale, a tonal turn the review calls slightly disappointing but understandable.
- At its world premiere, the somber film drew bursts of laughter that sharpened rather than lightened the emotion, according to the review.
- Dianne Wiest plays Diane, clad in leopard print and lipstick, 'slurring and spitting' her lines, while Watts becomes a 'quivering mound of anxiety' and Paulson exudes 'snide arrogance' before Sandra breaks open.
Why it matters: The debut positions Fern — known from 'American Horror Story' — as a director capable of wringing layered performances from a powerhouse trio, and gives Watts and Paulson a matrilineal showcase built around memory, forgiveness, and performative femininity. Its tonal pivot from black comedy to unabashed melodrama will likely polarize audiences expecting one mode and getting another.
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