In the first shot of “Actress,” Robert Greene’s elusive and intriguing new film, Brandy Burre stands at her kitchen sink, wearing a red dress that matches the symmetrically placed poinsettias on the windowsill. In a voice-over, she muses that she is a “type A” personality, which she defines as someone “who breaks things.”
Later, the audience will be reminded that similar words were spoken by Theresa D’Agostino, the political consultant Ms. Burre played on “The Wire.” (In the third and fourth seasons, Theresa had an affair with Jimmy McNulty and helped Tommy Carcetti become mayor of Baltimore.) And the overlap might make us wonder about the boundary between actors and the characters they play, especially when, as in this film, an actress is playing herself.
That’s a common enough phrase, but the more you think about it, the stranger it sounds. And as Mr. Greene’s camera follows Ms. Burre through the routines of her life in the Hudson Valley, where she and Tim Reinke are raising their two young children, you might wonder just what kind of performance you are watching. At times, Ms. Burre, her acting career dormant, seems to be throwing herself into the role of housewife (though she and Mr. Reinke are not married) and mother as if it were an especially demanding part. In the course of her daily activities — cleaning the house, buying groceries, planning birthday parties, ferrying the kids to play dates and dance classes — she gives off a glint of self-consciousness, as if she were offering a glimpse not of her everyday reality but of her creative process.
In a sense she is. The movie’s title should be taken at face value, which is to say with an awareness of its double meaning. Ms. Burre is never not aware of the camera, and this all-access slice of life is also a highly constructed artifact, with some notable slants and omissions. As elliptical as an Ann Beattie short story, leaving a great deal unsaid, it chronicles the end of a relationship and the limbo that follows.
Early on, Ms. Burre says that she has more than once asked Mr. Reinke, who manages some restaurants and bars the couple owns, to move out of their house. He sticks around, but they don’t seem very happy together. His shyness around the camera makes his side of things hard to figure out, and at times the movie turns coy about what exactly is going on. On a trip to New York, Ms. Burre seems to be involved with someone else, but while this lover’s existence is alluded to a couple of times, he is never named or clearly seen.
Maybe he didn’t want to get involved with the film, or maybe he’s beside the point. “Actress” is not a novel but a portrait, one focused on Ms. Burre’s frustrations and ambitions and on the challenges facing not-quite-young women in her profession. Mr. Greene’s impressionistic style and rough, off-center compositions create an atmosphere of intimacy, as if the viewer were being invited to read Ms. Burre’s diary or her mind. After an hour and a half in her company, you might feel as if you know her very well, even as you have no idea who she really is. That might be the result of her existential condition, or it might just be her job.