Just in case: Watch the movie first. Scroll down, do it, then scroll back up and read. There’s a thrill every month when you get to do this piece of writing because usually you hit play and don’t know what you’re going to get. “The Year of Staring at Noses” should have no introduction or expectation. Just press play.
So now that you’ve seen it, start reading. Karen Knox and Matt Eastman’s film is wildly unpredictable and uncomfortably funny. It had me fooled for a while, maybe it fooled you too. I really wanted to believe, maybe even thought for a second that they stumbled on some found footage and cheekily interspersed it with home-made disaster videos that are as funny on their own as they are in context of a disaster unfolding before us, laughing from the very beginning. Should I feel kinda bad about that if I thought it was real?
This disaster’s name is Samantha Bryan (Knox), a young woman who has fallen victim to thinking everything about her has to be filmed and put on the internet in order for it to count as part of her life self-worth comes through likes and she knows this better than anyone else but doesn’t want anyone else to know how much she knows or does she? She wants more than anything in the world right now wanted for years to be on “The Bachelor.”
Throughout the years we watch clips of her audition videos; something seems off but everything just seems so generic about her. One of my favorite choices these two make is that we never see Samantha’s ratings or comments or followers at all ever ever ever… but she looks engaged with some kind of an audience; also lonely as hell.
The name of the film refers to how far Samantha is willing to go for love (a man she’s never met). She gets rejected because of her nose, so she gets it fixed, and a good chunk of the middle part of the movie is her checking in with her followers wearing a bandage on her nose and talking about what getting a nose job feels like. Which really amps up the tension as to whether or not this huge investment will pay off. By halfway through you might be in on the joke, but you definitely want to see where it goes.
And Knox sells all this with her performance as Samantha. We know exactly this type, and it did remind me that yes I am making some wise choices by not following these people on Instagram or TikTok. We feel sorry for Samantha because Knox makes us feel it even if we’re also meant to feel superior to her. The Year of Staring at Noses plays with form by making you feel like you’re watching a screencap of Samantha’s Greatest Hits.
While occasionally clicking over into related videos of pratfalls, car crashes and stunts gone wrong. Samantha sees romance on the horizon, but we see wrongheadedness self absorption “spiritual bankruptcy” (barf) and all that ultimately leads parallel with every one of these failures.
It’s wild ride that’s worth going back for seconds and thirds, I don’t watch The Bachelor but I have done my time with trashy reality TV before (if you want an addictive completely absurd wedding-based reality show check out Don’t Tell The Bride it’s currently on Tubi). I’m sure not all rejected contestants are like Samantha, but does put another layer of weirdness onto the whole concept.
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