Rosalind Eleazar in Chris Rock’s Tender Drama

The title characer in Chris Rock’s sure-footed fourth feature as director, Misty Green, is having a rough week. An actress still best known for a TV series that ended years back, she’s about to be evicted, her bipolar brother is fresh out of a psych ward and in need of both emotional and financial support, a pimpy former colleague dangles a lucrative sex-work gig, and while her undeniable gifts might very well help her book an acting job, the many axes she has to grind in the entertainment industry keep getting in the way.

In a star-making performance, Rosalind Eleazar — best known as the tough MI5 operative grieving for her partner on Slow Horses — bites into this gift of a role with grit, tenacity and zero-fucks-given scrappiness. It’s a revelatory turn in a sensitively observed drama that depicts Los Angeles as both a shimmering beacon of fame and success and a soul-sucking grind of constant rejection, where disparities of race, class and gender are as much an obstacle as that casting director who seems to hate you. Following its premieres at the Toronto and New York film festivals, A24 will release the movie Oct. 9.

Coming 12 years after Rock’s last feature as writer-director, Top Five, a highly entertaining account of the quest to be taken seriously of a standup comic with a history of substance abuse issues, Misty Green is both an extension of certain themes explored in the 2014 film and a departure. While Andre Allen, Rock’s character in the earlier movie, had a fear of not being funny when sober, Eleazar’s Misty is more of a dabbler than an addict. But her problems with impulse control make it hard for her to say no to a night of hard partying, which tends to mess with her professional obligations.

The biggest difference, however, is that Misty Green is a significantly more mellow and thoughtful movie, the work of a mature director who knows what he wants to say and has full command of the tone of voice in which to say it. The film is frequently funny, but Rock and his actors never push for comedy. The wry humor is undergirded by melancholy, darkness, despair — by an awareness that even when you appear to have made it in Hollywood, maintaining that perch on the success ladder is not a given. Talent alone often is not enough.

Misty appears to have been floundering for years, bristling every time some young up-and-comer tells her how much their mom and dad loved her in her Emmy-winning role on a show called Red Eye. She’s handed a deadline to pull herself out of her rut when Celine (Amy Landecker, hilariously caustic) bursts in unannounced to kick Misty out of her late husband’s apartment. Dazed and hungover, Misty protests that Celine’s husband gave her the apartment, but the unmerry widow is not buying it, giving her a week to find new digs. The industry town’s monomania makes it seem almost normal when Celine starts running audition lines with her before begrudgingly agreeing to the seven-day grace period.

With no money and no friends or exes willing to help her out, Misty needs to book a gig, pronto. But given her abrasive reputation — she was once fired off a film for punching the wardrobe woman in the face — that’s not easy. 

Things are further complicated by the reappearance of her loose-cannon brother Jay (Daniel Kaluuya), released from a psych ward but still only tenuously in control of his mental health. Her occasional hook-up, the slick and insincere Zach (Adam Driver), tempts her out on the town the night before an important audition, offering her a chance at big money if she’s willing to put aside her moral qualms and be part of the “entertainment” for a frisky emir at a lavish party in Dubai. Driver has often been fearless about playing unlikable characters, but Zach takes him to new lows of douchiness when he’s tossing Birkin bags, jewels and cash to a screaming crowd of paid models.

Her least complicated relationship is with straight-talking bestie Naomi (Anna Kendrick), with whom she works out at a gym near the Santa Monica Pier. Naomi serves as a sounding board and support system for Misty’s anxieties. That’s more than she gets from her agent Randy (Topher Grace), who throws up his hands in defeat after another abortive audition, telling her, “No one wants to work with you. You’re too difficult!”

While this is very much an ensemble piece, with a bright constellation around Eleazar’s blazing supernova, Rock gives himself a choice suporting role as the one person in the industry who might not have given up on Misty. Jordan is a director who was forced to fire Misty some years back for her anger issues. He’s now staying in her apartment building while holding auditions for a Dreamgirls remake, and while he’s wary about working with the volatile Misty again, he doesn’t rule it out.

That remains true even after she gets high with Zach while on an impromtpu date with Jordan, getting them both banged up in a car accident. She goes back to her apartment — where the eviction clock keeps ticking — and tips her stash of booze and pills down the drain, probably not for the first time, but maybe the last? 

Jordan often gets to channel classic Rock humor (“All civil rights movies suck, you wanna know how I know? Because white people like them!”), but the character is also notable for his sensitivity, even soulfulness. Jordan is an industry veteran with genuine empathy for people like Misty, coughed up and spat out while trying to sustain a career in the face of endless closed doors. The chemistry of Eleazar’s scenes with Rock is sublime.

Eleazar’s layered, brittle but also vulnerable performance makes Misty’s depths as a performer apparent, notably in two songs. She sings with moving expressiveness on a torchy version of “One Night Only” in her Dreamgirls audition and a stunningly heartfelt take on Radiohead’s “Creep,” in a Hollywood Roosevelt lounge bar gig.

Naturally, her propensity for self-sabotage means her path is one step forward, two steps back, through no fault of her own when Jay loses his cool after being pulled over twice by the same Black cop (Anthony Anderson, one of a handful of cameos) in both cases with no cause beyond racial profiling. When Jay lands in prison, the fiercely protective Misty feels obligated to come up with his exorbitant bail, prompting desperate choices that nudge her career goals aside.

Throughout all this, Eleazar keeps us firmly in Misty’s corner in a bold performance that simultaneously pushes the audience away while pulling us in. The tenderness with which Rock has built this vehicle around character, actress and a milieu he clearly knows intimately imbue the material with an aching depth of feeling that stayed with me for days.

Misty Green is a poignant snapshot of one woman sweating on the showbiz treadmill, in a town where glittering dreams, crushing defeat and emergency compromise solutions often walk in tandem — the latter echoed in constant local crime news reports heard on car radios. Misty’s personality flaws are what make her so captivating in a smart, refreshingly understated movie that’s very much an insider’s view — jaded, but also clear-eyed — and a credit especially to Rock and Eleazar.