‘Damsel’
Rating: R for “some violence, language, sexual material, and brief graphic nudity”Running time: 113 minutes
Pitiful men pin their hopes on delusions of romance in David and Nathan Zellner’s clever and melancholy western “Damsel,” an offbeat odyssey about the foolhardiness of believing in the “damsel in distress.”
The Zellner brothers’ last film, “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter,” was based on an urban legend about a Japanese woman who, believing the Coen brothers’ “Fargo” to be a true story, travels to wintery North Dakota to find the buried case of cash left by Steve Buscemi’s character.
That movie, patiently idiosyncratic, found some poignancy in an absurd, ambling tale about fatally misguided misconceptions, and much is the same in the offbeat “Damsel.” Almost everybody but Mia Wasikowska – the “damsel” in question – is tilting at windmills.
The Zellners, who wrote, directed and co-star in the film, have moved to the Old West but the Coens are still close at hand. In lesser, hit-or-miss doses, “Damsel” has imitated some of their verbal theatricality and straight-faced comedy.