The audience at Hateship Loveship seemed to be there primarily for the film’s star, Kristen Wiig. At the screening I attended, I saw at least three people in separate conversations mimicking Wiig’s SNL character Dooneese, the fourth in a group of otherwise attractive sisters who is cursed with baby hands and blessed with a very strong sex drive.

I mention Dooneese because the character gives some context for Wiig’s particular set of acting chops. She has an all-consuming physical humor and an enthusiasm for ugly weirdos. Even Bridesmaids, Wiig’s 2010 screenwriting debut, is known for its great feats of physical comedy: it’s so hard to pick just one example but here’s a scene where Wiig takes anti-anxiety medication on a plane. The way she moves her arms and mouth is so bizarrely funny.

What I’m getting at is this: as a melancholy, small-town, domestic drama, Hateship Loveship seemed like it would be a total departure for Wiig. Based on a short story by Alice Munro, the film centers on Johanna (Wiig), a young woman hired as housekeeper for an older man and his granddaughter; the girl’s mother has died and her father, Ken (Guy Pearce), is a deadbeat addict who lives in a nearby city.

Johanna is uneducated and naive, so when the granddaughter pretends to be her own deadbeat dad and corresponds with Johanna via email -- a cameo by my favorite 21st century phenomenon, catfishing -- she falls head over heels for Ken and shows up at his apartment, ready to move in. Johanna immediately picks up the housekeeper role in this new place, cleaning and caretaking even after it’s clear she’s been pranked. Ken is sort of surprised when she arrives, and even more so when she stays, but you get the idea that this guy has spent most of his adult life in a fog: he’s pretty laid back about the whole thing.

These are characters stuck in cycles of self-destruction, poverty, addiction, and depression. But through the unlikely casting of Wiig as Johanna, the film finds real moments of lightness and humor. Wiig crawls through windows, makes out with her reflection in a mirror, tries to hide in plain sight behind a tree, and generates the weirdest smile when Ken kicks his drugged-up ex-girlfriend out of their home. Scenes that could have been somber or unremarkable instead became triumphantly funny.

I kept thinking about how Wiig was able to play this character so convincingly. Ultimately, I decided that Hateship Loveship is what would happen if you took one of Wiig’s SNL characters and gave them a serious, thoughtful, dramatic narrative arc. Johanna is weird, awkward, full of nervousness and tics and discomfort; she walks strangely -- with her hands straight down in front of her thighs -- and I can just see the SNL sketch about the hapless housekeeper who keeps falling for increasingly ridiculous online pranks and scams. But in this film, Wiig approaches her character with kindness and thoughtfulness, and it turns out to be a rather warm and engaging portrayal.

Grade: B-

Eliza Rosenberry was a founding e-board member of NUFEC and graduated from Northeastern in 2011. She currently lives in Brooklyn and does book publicity for Blue Rider Press. Find her on Twitter @elizarosenberry.

Fish & Cat (dir. Shahram Mokri) is a 130-minute Iranian film that takes place in a single shot.

I’d assumed, before arriving in the theater at ND/NF this week, that Fish & Cat would suffer certain limitations of its gimmicky continuous filming: not least of which was the opportunity for error on the part of cast and crew alike. But primarily I was concerned that such a movie would be boring in favor of its technique. The plot would probably be small in scope with a requisite linear narrative.

Fortunately, I was wrong. Fish & Cat is complicated and weird. It’s set up within cinematic traditions of American horror films: rumors of restaurants deep in the woods serving human flesh; a university kite-flying competition at the campsite; creepy old men wandering around the woods carrying a bag of rotting meat. The camera follows one character at a time as they wander the forest and campsite, and jumps between characters as they cross paths like I imagine fleas leap between passing dogs.

The story is non-linear, but also (sort of) linear: time passes normally for the characters but the film loops back on itself, via new characters, to moments already shown. In essence, this is Rust Cohle’s “time is a flat circle” theory in action. It feels like Primer at times, except without time travel.

For example: Kambiz’s dad drops him off at the campsite. Kambiz carries his kite and equipment looking around for a girl he likes, Mina. As Kambiz wanders through the campsite, he passes Parviz, the organizer of the event. The camera then follows Parviz as he looks through his backpack, notices something missing, and walks over to some friends asking about his missing kite lights. Parviz runs into Mina, who gradually makes her way back over to Kambiz, where they have a flirty exchange. Almost an hour later (by my clock), we return via Parviz to that original moment with Kambiz, and this time the camera goes with Kambiz to his campsite instead of with Parviz to his backpack.

But there have been no camera cuts; we have been with characters the entire time (an alibi, if you will, that there has been no opportunity for time to have gone backwards or slowed down in the world of the film). This superb cinematography was executed by Mahmud Kalari (A Separation).

It’s difficult to defend how this complicated narrative works, and at some moments in the film it doesn’t. There are plot points left unexplained, extended narrative arcs that don’t go anywhere. But the spiderweb structure (around and around, and often stuck) is sort of liberating as a viewer, once you give up trying to track it. Fish & Cat gives its audience the opportunity to experience moments again and again, through multiple perspectives and with different contexts.

Fish & Cat will likely not get US distribution for a variety of reasons, which is a shame because I think the film could find an audience here. Its rural setting, conflation of myth and reality, and overwhelmingly creepy tone set Fish & Cat apart from other similar low-budget films, and Mokri is a real emerging talent. I’m always excited to see new films out of Iran -- particularly because of how few Iranian movies actually screen here (Mokri was unable to attend his film’s screening at ND/NF in New York because of how difficult it is for an Iranian to travel to the US). But Fish & Cat is different from what I’ve seen of other contemporary Iranian cinema, and I’m excited to see where Mokri goes next.

Watch the trailer here.

Eliza Rosenberry was a founding e-board member of NUFEC and graduated from Northeastern in 2011. She currently lives in Brooklyn and does book publicity for Blue Rider Press. Find her on Twitter @elizarosenberry.