We all know or have known someone like Sherry Swanson: lazy, whorish, brimming with erratic energy, fickle to a fault, so unstable that a gentle breeze could bring it all tumbling down.
She is the subject of “Sherrybaby,” a portrait film that doesn’t really go anywhere but does a lot while not doing anything at all. Maggie Gyllenhaal skillfully plays the heroin-addicted, recently released ex-con, in a career move than can be termed as either bold or questionable, seeing as how her career rests on the cusp of stardom.
Sherry is first glimpsed on the bus ride home from prison. Her personality type is recognizable after a moment’s observation. She gets to work early, having sex with the poor lout who runs the halfway house and rushing to her brother Bobby’s (Brad William Henke) house to visit her daughter. In the meantime, the child has found a much more capable mother in the form of Bobby’s wife Lynette (Bridget Barkan), who promptly instructs the daughter to address Sherry by first name.
The film’s power rests within the ease in which one can recognize Sherry’s personality in others. She wants things, but resorts to seduction or grotesque temper tantrums when they don’t work out. Her entire wardrobe seems to consist of tank tops and short-shorts, not to mention an aversion toward brassieres. When Sherry bitterly complains that no one trusts or believes in her, it’s a testament to her feeble grip on reality that she has to wonder why. For all the distinctly adult social behavior she exudes, her mindset is fundamentally childlike.
Written and directed by Laurie Collyer, “Sherrybaby” sticks to an astute depiction of one drug-addled tramp’s struggle to gain some semblance of a respectable existence. It’s often uncomfortable, but believable, when Sherry clings to unrealistic ideas about a steady job and a happy home life, only to revert to profanity-laden tirades when these dreams meet the most minor of frustrations. One scene even suggests a genesis to her pathetic behavior, but the explanation feels excessively simplistic.
Sherry may temporarily be off heroin, but drugs are a symptom of her personality, not a cause. Observe how she secures the job of her choice in a scene sure to make some less scrupulous viewers want to work with female cons. Or how she latches onto Dean (Danny Trejo), a 12 step director who treats Sherry with a kindness that’s part gentle, part sleazy.
Her thoroughly dislikable personality makes the film stand out, but also its Achilles’ heel. The study of a woman whose actions suggest an almost animalistic clump of impulses in place of personality never grants the subject the sympathy needed to make her struggles riveting. Come the end, we receive one of those resolutions that suggests the writer grew too fond of the character and didn’t want a more unfortunate scenario to close out the story. I believe we all want the Sherry’s of the world to turn out well and good, but those of us who reside in reality have seen too many of these stories conclude poorly to trust that any of them do.
3.5 out of 5
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