Miss Stevens

Rachel Stevens, a high school teacher, agrees to take three students to a weekend drama competition. A hotel, rehearsals, meals and a long drive. The students expect an adult authority from her, but Rachel is not exactly held together either; she has just lost her mother and is not talking to anyone. The subject is not teaching but the fact that adulthood is also a performance. Rachel struggles to keep her distance from her students, particularly Billy, who is emotionally unstable; the film sets that relationship up like a danger and then turns it into something ordinary. The form is small: a few rooms, a car, a hotel corridor. Scenes are not cut before they finish and the camera waits while people talk. It is Julia Hart's first film as a director. Hart was a high school teacher before she wrote it, so the fatigue described is direct observation. Timothée Chalamet appears in a pre-fame role, and the film's most discussed scene is his: reading a piece of theatre in front of the competition judges. Lily Rabe plays Rachel and Lili Reinhart one of the students. Who it is for: viewers who like small-scale American independent drama. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for incident; this is almost entirely talk and waiting.