Fay Grim (2007)

Hal Hartley's 1997 film HENRY FOOL tells the story of Simon Grim (James Urbaniak), a garbage collector in Queens whose burgeoning talent as a poet is spurred on to greatness by Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan), a failed novelist with a shady past. Though the film gave Hartley art-house success, it was an unlikely candidate for sequeldom--let alone one that's a spy thriller--but, years later, that what he's given us with FAY GRIM.

Henry has been missing for seven years, and Simon's sister, Fay (Parker Posey), is a single parent raising her and Henry's 14-year-old son, Ned (Liam Aiken), in Woodside, Queens. Simon is in prison for helping Henry escape from the law, but Fay is given a chance to spring him when she is approached by CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum), who asks her to go Paris to obtain Henry's "confessions," a series of notebooks he filled with international political secrets. Once in Paris, Fay is preyed upon by operatives other than those she is meant to deal with, and things don't go as planned. An unwitting pawn in a complex international scheme set in motion by her missing husband, Fay finds herself traveling to Turkey for answers. Fans of Hartley's work will be pleased with this oddball take on the espionage genre, in which a permanently tilted camera mirrors the loopy proceedings. Though Posey's Fay is a stereotypical "clueless American abroad" in designer duds, and her adventure seems at first to be a silly game, bodies begin piling up, and the tale gathers real weight. FAY GRIM is a unique addition to Hartley's singular body of work, and a treat for indie film fans regardless of their familiarity with HENRY FOOL.