You might not know Brie Larson by name, but you will soon.
Over the past few years, she's delivered commanding performances in small films (Short Term 12) and stolen scenes in bigger ones (21 Jump Street, Trainwreck).In Room, she puts the whole package together. It's the definition of a star turn.
Larson shows exquisite range and complexity as Joy, a young woman abducted as a teen and locked in her captor's gardening shed. That's where she gave birth to Jack (Jacob Tremblay), and where she's worked hard to convince her son that this dingy square is a place to let his imagination run wild. It is Room. As far as he knows, it is the world.
This conceit propels Room through its claustrophobic first half, a stirring portrait of the bond between mother and son. Larson does all kinds of wonders here. The role demands a sort of performance within a performance: Joy's self-imposed mandate is to shield her kid from the horrors represented by the creep (Sean Bridgers) who visits his mom's bed every night.
But she also wants to get out, with her son, and this urgency requires cracks in the façade, an occasional acknowledgement of reality. It's a multilayered role, and Larson makes it her own.
Abduction and captivity can actually be played for laughs, as we learned from the Netflix series The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but the more natural métier is horror. Room doesn't really move in either direction, and it subsequently gets a little squishy. In protecting her child, Joy is also protecting the audience. That's nice of her, but sometimes we shouldn't be protected. Sometimes the horrible must feel horrific.
The film, which was directed by Lenny Abrahamson and adapted by Emma Donoghue from her own novel, leaves little doubt it will travel outside the room. When it takes us there, Room becomes a different but equally intriguing kind of animal. Tremblay's best moments reflect the awe of seeing the world for the first time, the combination of wonder and terror that accompanies a glimpse of the sky.
The real world also contains elements of satire, especially when the news media enforces its own sense of entrapment by camping in front of Joy's family house. To Donoghue's credit, escape in Room doesn't mean ecstasy. Joy's father (William H. Macy, welcome anywhere) can't bring himself to look at his grandson, who was, after all, fathered by a rapist. Her mother (Joan Allen, also welcome anywhere) struggles with the fact that her teenager is no longer a teenager; the film's most explosive scenes revolve around their bickering.
Room is a good movie with a great performance at its core. Larson's career was already going places; she has a lead role in the upcoming King Kong sequel Skull Island, and she's set to play Billie Jean King, opposite Steve Carell's Bobby Riggs, in The Battle of the Sexes.
But Room will be remembered as the movie that etched her permanent place on the map.
ROOM (B+)
Directed by Lenny Abrahamson. R (language). 118 mins. At the Landmark Magnolia and Angelika Plano.
