an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.