In a tailspin after her father's suicide and the end of a relationship, Catherine (Elisabeth Moss) retreats to a cabin with an old friend, Virginia (Katherine Waterston), but the solitude and tranquility fails to calm her fracturing mind. Their friendship strains as Catherine's grip on sanity unclasps. Queen of Earth—even the title is enigmatic—represents a high-wire act for every person involved in front or behind the camera, and no one slips. It is an acting showcase for Moss and Waterston. The former ventures to a place of ceramic-smashing, frenzy-eyed, tear-strewn extremity without sacrificing nuance. Her co-star's role—troubled in her own right and prone to internalizing her pain until it ferments into cynicism—is more subtle, but just as mesmerizing. Their interplay never ceases to fascinate and disturb: who is judging whom? Where does codependency end and domination/submission begin? And director Alex Ross Perry lifts from the best, evoking the claustrophobia of early Roman Polanski (a wilting salad stands in for Repulsion's rotting rabbit meat) and the urbane existential angst of Woody Allen at his most Bergmanesque. He also employs a number of stylistic devices and tics—eerily canted angles, flowery fonts—to maintain an atmosphere of elegant imbalance. The film's power lies in a type of paradox: the viewer is always aware of how designed the picture is, how it is an art-house homage with an inherited and intricately conceived style, yet its emotions still ring true and sting and cut.

A-