Complete Unknown (2016)

(On Cable TV, September 2021) When filmmakers set out to create character studies, it’s far more interesting when they pick aberrant characters. Someone weird is more interesting than someone ordinary, and that’s probably where writer-director Joshua Marston’s Complete Unknown most clearly distinguishes itself. Its first spark of interest comes when our married protagonist recognizes the new flame of his friend as an ex-girlfriend of his — one that simply disappeared in mysterious circumstances, never giving sign of life until now. As the film advances, it becomes clear that the female lead is leading a life of regular reinvention — lying convincingly in order to invent a new personal history for herself, and moving from city to city once the weight of her new life becomes too oppressive. There isn’t much more of a story — this is simply a sentimental touch-point for her and an expiation of old demons for him, but she’s not going to stop shedding identities and as the film ends, she moves on to something else. But the real worth of the film is in making viewers question the value placed on identity permanence — that we keep the same name, that our knowledge has developed over several years, that we remain accountable to people we’ve met earlier, that our history shapes us. The mysterious protagonist at the heart of Complete Unknown makes an argument against a principle that many would consider a bedrock of personal identity and even civil society. (And if you want to stretch the argument past the point of the film, I’d argue that fixation on identity permanence explains much of the discomfort around “coming out” or transitioning genders — once the person you thought you knew makes or expresses such a change from their established identity, many become very uncomfortable until that identity is re-established.)  While Complete Unknown doesn’t make its identity-shifting protagonist an object of sympathy, it does manage to create a rough understanding of her motivations, even if we’re left to complete the judgment. Good actors help the film go through its ideas — Rachel Weisz is more interesting than usual as the fluidly-named female lead, while Michael Shannon hits just the right wounded notes as a counter-argument that she’s hurting a tremendous number of people as she sheds identities. I don’t quite like many of the film’s sequences (the one where the two leads pretend to be doctors is thematically important, but feels slightly off) and I am this close to being outraged at the idea of someone casually shedding identities, but Complete Unknown does present a rarity: an unusual argument for something off-the-wall. I think that another take on the material could have been even more insightful, but, in the meantime, it’s a far more interesting film than you’d suspect from a cursory description.