Where Is Kyra?

"Where Is Kyra?" Is one film that as you watch you feel like you see the whole picture yet are thrown for a little surprise. Anyway it's a picture of dread and searching for the want and need for hope. And the performance though not typical from Michelle Pfeiffer is dark and different from most of her other pretty and attractive roles. Michelle plays Kyra Johnson a divorced and single now living with her sick mother in a New York apartment who now finds herself struggling to get by. Kyra is having problems finding work at middle age and plus she's cash strapped while trying to get back on her feet. Her only spice and treat in life is the on again and off again casual sex she has with a neighbor(Kiefer Sutherland). Problems abound daily life has fallen apart a path of grim and grave results lie ahead. This picture proves a point with the message that one can sink to new lows and will try anything to survive. It's not typical Michelle still it's worth a watch for it's dark nature.

Love Michelle, she is amazing. Was looking forward to watching this. But I couldn't get into it as the setting is just so dark you can hardly see people's faces. Also, the camera angles, people are talking and it seems to be focused on their hair and the back half of their dark head. I felt like I wanted to turn the camera around so I could see. I understand its part of the setting being dark but the camera angles are awful.

Some forced artism, bad musical escapades, but ultimately the message is powerfully delivered. This society destroys good people.

Having such big actors, I was hoping for a decent film.

Instead, the plot moves at a snail's pace and nothing really happens.

They could quite easily chop off an hour and the film would be at least bearable.

Nor great, not good. Just dull. The only consolation is that the acting is good but this isn't enough to earn great reviews.

Where is Kyra? the title asks. Ostensibly she lives in Brooklyn, but her real location, for the purposes of this low-lit, depressing mise en scene, is the interior darkness of a middle-aged, jobless, depressed woman (Michelle Pfeiffer). Aided by Oscar-nominated Bradford Young's shadowy cinematography, director Andrew Dosunmu crafts a near perfect outward evocation of the spiritual loneliness of a woman who has recently lost her mother.

As her life spirals downward spiritually and financially, Kyra finds some solace in the arms of neighbor Doug (Kiefer Sutherland), a part-time job slacker, who tries as much as he can to comfort her even though he is marginalized by the film's lighting and proxemics. Kyra is desperately alone in a city that forgets about the aging, like the recurring motif of the elderly lady with the cane.

A light larceny is forcing itself on Kyra, and who can blame her? Her credit cards have maxed out, and the job interviews have led nowhere. Although this is not a real thriller, enough of the noirish urban danger bleeds through to confirm the despair so many down and outers must feel in that unforgiving world on NYC and its burbs.

Pfeiffer should be recognized for her remarkably restrained and deeply-felt role. Unfortunately, writer Darci Picoult has little dialogue for her, and the lighting is the most powerful vehicle for the despair of urban loneliness and poverty, poverty porn if you will.

Where is Kyra? has a European feel in its languor and an American vibe in its class inequality. It's solid fare for cinephiles and those who need an antidote for their optimism.