Reality (2023)

If you didn't know that Reality was based on, well, reality, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it was a very odd film with a very strange tone. The Reality of the title is in fact Reality Winner, a young woman who at the time of the film's events was working for the NSA as a translator.

The film opens with Reality returning home to her house where she lives with her cat and dog, only to find two FBI agents waiting for her. Her conversation with them, that takes place over a couple of hours, is lifted directly from FBI transcripts of the interview itself and forms the paltry eighty minutes of Tina Satter's gripping drama.

Thankfully the quality of Satter's film is anything but paltry, despite the strangeness of what's unfolding in front of you.

It becomes slowly apparent that Reality is being accused of leaking highly classified information, and we very briefly see flashbacks of her sat at her work desk; one clip in particular at the beginning sees her at her station watching coverage of Fox News reporting on the firing of James Comey by President Trump. So we know something is afoot, but the tone that the FBI use with her and the disconcerting mix of friendliness and firm conversation make it very difficult to ascertain what exactly it is that's being revealed here, and indeed whether or not Reality is guilty. s

It's an extremely slight film, the conversation/interview itself is the film, and it's helped along its way by a terrific central performance by Sydney Sweeney as Reality, seemingly initially flummoxed at what the authorities are doing at her house and yet at the same time there's something about her attitude that suggests she might very well know more than she's letting on.

Having had no idea of what the outcome was going into the film, I have to say I was gripped for the duration of Reality. There's a score by Nathan Micay that works implicitly, implying that we're watching a brooding thriller which is frequently how Reality feels at times. Although the mood of the atmosphere is bizarre to say the least, we know that this is word for word the exchanges that took place, and there are moments where words or sentences are blanked out due to these phrases being redacted from the original FBI files.

It calls to mind the utter madness of the US gun laws very swiftly, as the FBI remove three (legal) firearms from Reality's house before she is allowed to enter- but this is very much an outsider's view of the US Constitution of course, and this isn't what Satter's film is about; that's a mere footnote in what is an engrossing eighty minutes of film. 7.7/10