Odds are good you’ve never seen a film quite like “Fay Grim,” but then again that’s the case for most Hal Hartley films. There’s just nothing like them.

A director who flirts with the realm of the avant-garde in making movies that some appreciate as complex puzzles daring us to put them together, just as others yawn and throw up their hands at the seeming incoherent randomness of it all, “Fay Grim” is perhaps one of his more breezy entries – but no less divisive.

The latest film to be released through the day-and-date release strategy embraced by HDNet films, in which “Fay Grim” is being released this week in theaters, on DVD and on the HDNet cable channel, the idea seems to be that an instant mass-distribution for “Fay Grim” may help the cult icon reach even wider audiences with his latest work.

And you know, the company behind such other films as Steven Soderbergh’s “Bubble” may be right this time around. There’s such a quirky sense of humor in this film – of a sensibility that often arises in short comedies posted on YouTube – that a wider audience may indeed be enticed to check out “Fay Grim,” after having it recommended to them from friends.

The story lies at the peak of quirky: A sequel to another Hartley fil, 1997’s indie “Henry Fool,” “Fay Grim” stars Parker Posey as the title character, one of the most vibrant actresses that mainstream America has never heard of (though her recent, sarcastic appearance in “Superman Returns” may have brought her some much-deserved recent attention). In the previous film, she witnessed her lover, Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan) flee from the authorities with his artistic brother Simon (James Urbaniak), a poet, locked up for assisting Henry in his disappearance.

Now, living in Queens, on a feeble budget – primarily constituted from royalties derive from Simon’s literary achievements – Grim is struggling to get through each difficult day, all while balancing care for her son and the sudden affections thrown her way from Simon’s former literary agent (Chuck Montgomery).

For Grim, it’s a fairly straight-forward, daily routine, until one day her son receives a kaleidoscope in the mail, and the CIA descends on her life, primarily in the form of Agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum), who insists the kaleidoscope is a sign, and that many of Simon’s writings were essential tools to the war of international espionage.

Springing him from jail, and ordering Fay herself to be one of their primary weapons in terms of breaking this suspicious circle of spying, Fay finds herself as the accidental superspy, forced to juggle her simultaneous excitement, fear and inadequacy. As she races from one locale to the next, and the bizarre scenarios turn dangerous, she is literally just your average single mother fending off the most sophisticated of enemies.

And it’s primarily thanks to Posey that the whole thing becomes an infectious in-joke. The further she is pushed to play the part, the more extreme the situation that she suddenly finds herself confronting, it’s easy to see how “Fay Grim” could have inadvertently become a heavy-handed James Bond violence-fest, or a misguided “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” half-hearted attempt at comedy. But instead, what the movie does is zero in on Grim’s shifty eyes, her awkward stare, and her impulsive demeanor, creating a nuanced character study about a woman forced to act out of character, and the further she is pressed to portray something she’s not, the more hilarious the whole thing becomes.

Then again, Hartley’s comedic stylings are not for everyone. There’s no laugh track here – no easy indicators as to how to read the whole thing. But for those who see the political allegory here, that the United States government is placing our safety in the hands of someone who doesn’t know what she’s doing, and more importantly doesn’t know why she’s doing any of it (she admits she only read the “dirty parts” of Simon’s writings), “Fay Grim” is a nothing short of a comic feast.

by: Steven Snyder steven@zertinet.com, Published 2007-06-09