Park Avenue Review – Fiona Shaw is fearless in this upscale mother-daughter relationship drama set in New York | film

FIona Shaw finds tremendous form in this sublime drama about mother-daughter tension and first-world problems, and Katherine Waterston (as ever) is really good. There’s plenty of amusement and sophisticated sadness here, even though co-writer and director Gaby Dellal has created what is ultimately a fairly average-looking film.

Shaw plays Kate, an elegant and wealthy widow who lives in a beautiful apartment on Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan, is known for her astute disdain for those less elegant than herself and is about to publish a memoir about her life with her late husband, a Chinese art collector. Suddenly her adult daughter, Charlotte (Waterston), appears after running out on her abusive husband; She intends to stay for a while with her mother at her childhood home on Park Avenue while she figures things out.

Charlotte immediately regresses into her teenage self, all to the polite, sarcastic dismay of her mother, who seems to suggest that it would be better if Charlotte simply returned to her husband and somehow made this marriage work. As things progress, the strange mother-daughter marital relationship becomes more intense and more intense as Charlotte realizes that Kit’s airy, arrogant detachment and playful, domineering mannerisms mask a deeper pain – although it is quite extraordinary that Charlotte did not guess what was physically wrong before then.

It’s a fun, entertaining spectacle with upscale New York locations and scenes that haven’t been in vogue since the middle of Woody Allen’s tenure. There’s sweetness and sadness here, with an interesting cameo by British author Hari Kunzru, though it’s also unclear whether it all adds up to anything very substantive. However, there are great things about Shaw, he is brave and direct in a way that very few actors can match.