Directed by Samantha Aldana
Written by Kelly Murtagh and Bryce Parsons-Twesten
Starring Kelly Murtagh, Bobby Gilchrist, Gralen Bryant Banks, Erika Ashley
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour 28 minutes
Streaming at Tribeca Festival starting June 13

by Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

Shapeless is a visceral, unnerving, and raw portrait of Ivy, a New Orleans lounge singer (Kelly Murtagh) struggling with an eating disorder. But a diagnosis is never named, no one says “bulimia.” This is not an after school special. No one conveniently walks in on her making herself throw up so she can get help. She lives an isolated existence, consorting with her bandmates when she needs to and going to work at a dry cleaner during the day. She keeps bandmate Oscar (Bobby Gilchrist) at arm’s length, in spite of his continuing interest and flirtation. Ivy’s condition is something that does not have an effect on anyone else, at least not initially. She’s not hurting anyone other than herself. She lives in a routine of work, singing, and obsessively preening and swiping her body with her fingers to make sure her collarbone juts out and  the right amount of ribs are visible. She counts them every day.

Shapeless is the feature-length debut of director Samantha Aldana, based on a script written by Murtagh and Bryce Parson-Twesten. Murtagh is in nearly ever frame, and supporting characters have minimal dialogue. We live in Ivy’s head. We see how repulsed she is when she’s around people eating. Is she repulsed, or is part of her jealous they can consume calories with reckless abandon? The sounds of chews and gulps are amplified. Eating really can be a disgusting thing through a filmmaker’s eyes. In Shiva Baby, where a young woman is trapped at a shiva, her family chomps and moans while eating in slow motion. It becomes obscene. A woman comes to the cleaner, eating fast food, sipping loudly through a straw. Meanwhile, Ivy eyeballs the vending machine. She allows herself to binge, in private. She is never seen eating or drinking around anyone else.

Shapeless is artfully staged, and Murtagh brings a commanding and heartbreaking performance. This is a multi-genre film. It’s certainly horror, in that “horror” is defined by the persistent feeling of dread, but it's also a psychological drama. As Ivy’s condition worsens, she develops body dysmorphia. She hallucinates that her fingers are webbed, that her eye becomes a mouth, that there’s a blister on her finger. The practical effects are impressive, made even more surreal by how crude they look. At one point, her arm cracks like the dessert in an earthquake, and a sore folds open like the eggs in Alien. Director Aldana employs surrealistic imagery throughout to show Ivy’s descent into madness. Ivy is seen screaming inside cellophane, suffocating. She’s captured in several reflections: the window of a vending machine, her bathroom mirror, her rearview mirror. After a cashier sees junk food on the conveyor belt, she comments that Ivy is lucky: “I’d weigh a million pounds if I ate like that.” Your body is the most private thing about you that is visible to strangers.

Shapeless wisely uses lounge lighting in many of its scenes. Shot in New Orleans, night scenes are cast in with red bar lighting, blues and purples, or green. Ivy’s apartment looks as ancient as the city itself; the light fixtures, the peeling wallpaper, the chipping paint of the kitchen. Ivy takes as much care of her home as she does of her body. This is a breakthrough performance for Murtagh, who previously appeared in films and shows shot around Louisiana. It’s not often that a horror film can drive me to the point of tears, but a scene where Ivy goes to the doctor parallels the titular scene from Never Sometimes Rarely Always. When probed with a question Ivy can’t bring herself to answer, she stays quiet, hoping the doctor will move on to the next question. But the doctor doesn’t, and Ivy slowly begins crying. Shapeless doesn’t have to rely on pulsating music or eerie strings to create every single moment of tension. Much of the music is what is heard inside a lounge, with the exception of a scene where Ivy decides to let loose and drink and smoke weed, which is set to “Come Near Me” by Massive Attack.

The script is a little inconclusive, unsure where it wants to end. It’s a small, ultimately inconsequential flaw in what is otherwise a stylistic and incredibly well-acted film. I thought about how Shapeless might be triggering for some, but it’s never exploitative and it treats this subject very carefully. It never paints Ivy as a monster. You never see what other people say about her. Shapeless is an original film that explores its subject with sensitivity, but without compromise.  

See all of our Tribeca 2021 coverage here.