kennethdower Where is Kyra? is one of the best films I've seen in ages. Masterfully shot, it's a superb rendering of a life in quiet desperation descending into bleakness. Michelle Pfeiffer is heartbreaking.-When she's handing out flyers, just in the distance you can see the sign for Fresh Pond Road, which is in Queens; later, she boards a M60 bus which runs only in Manhattan and Queens. Not every film taking place in an outer borough is set in Brooklyn. ;)

lavatch A better title for this film might be "The Lower Depths," that recalls the nineteenth-century naturalism of downtrodden members of the working class. It might also be placed in the category of "kitchen sink" drama that depicts the angst of struggling blue collar workers in Great Britain in the 1950s. But in this apparently dark and dreary drama, the filmmakers oddly seem to be making a stab a comedy as well. Because the film focuses on the travails of a woman and moves from the tragic to the tragi-comic to the farcical style, it might be best termed a "broad" comedy.The focus of the film is a down-and-out woman in Brooklyn named Kyra (Michelle Pfeiffer) whose hardscrabble life is on lurid display. The film begins with Kyra assisting her elderly mother, who dies early in the film. Kyra is broke and unable to find a job. At an interview for a clerical job, she knocks over a plant, and the body language of the employer indicates clearly that she will not be landing the job. The film pointedly addresses how incompetent Krya is in virtually everything.Kyra is so desperate that she begins the charade of dressing up like her mother and cashing her mother's pension checks at the bank, long after the mother's death. Kyra's lover is a man she met in bar: Doug (Kiefer Sutherland), who is a driver who has just gotten his life back together, is appalled that Kyra has committed fraud. But Doug's warning does not seem to register with Kyra.The production values of this film were uneven. The lighting is much too dark and blurry. The pacing is laboriously slow. At one point, Kyra laments that "nothing you worked for is working." That same adage could be applied to this film until a pivotal moment where the style shifts from grim realism to comedy. The police are now onto Kyra's scam, but she is determined that she is going to outfox them. Throughout the film, it is clear that Kyra cannot do anything right, yet at the end, she tries to pull of an amazing stunt and even enlists her loser boyfriend to participate in the charade. If you want to see how all of this turns out, be sure to check the film out and discover how kitchen sink drama can be instantly transformed into broad comedy.

Robert1951 I've watched the trailer, because Michelle Pfeiffer is one of my favorite actresses. And then I heard the voice of Kiefer Sutherland. Why doesn't he use his vocal cords? What he does when he speaks cannot even be called whispering. He does the same terrible thing in Designated Survivor. Is this becoming a trend, because Gillian Anderson also does not use her vocal cords in the 3rd Season of The Fall. After just half of the first episode of The fall Season 3 I stopped watching. The way these actors talk without using their vocal cords is excruciatingly irritating. Isn't there one director who will scream at Sutherland and Anderson: "Why don't you use your vocal cords? People can't hear you!"

jdesando Where is Kyra? the title asks. Ostensibly she lives in Brooklyn, but her real location, for the purposes of this low-lit, depressing mise en scene, is the interior darkness of a middle-aged, jobless, depressed woman (Michelle Pfeiffer). Aided by Oscar-nominated Bradford Young's shadowy cinematography, director Andrew Dosunmu crafts a near perfect outward evocation of the spiritual loneliness of a woman who has recently lost her mother.As her life spirals downward spiritually and financially, Kyra finds some solace in the arms of neighbor Doug (Kiefer Sutherland), a part-time job slacker, who tries as much as he can to comfort her even though he is marginalized by the film's lighting and proxemics. Kyra is desperately alone in a city that forgets about the aging, like the recurring motif of the elderly lady with the cane.A light larceny is forcing itself on Kyra, and who can blame her? Her credit cards have maxed out, and the job interviews have led nowhere. Although this is not a real thriller, enough of the noirish urban danger bleeds through to confirm the despair so many down and outers must feel in that unforgiving world on NYC and its burbs.Pfeiffer should be recognized for her remarkably restrained and deeply-felt role. Unfortunately, writer Darci Picoult has little dialogue for her, and the lighting is the most powerful vehicle for the despair of urban loneliness and poverty, poverty porn if you will. Where is Kyra? has a European feel in its languor and an American vibe in its class inequality. It's solid fare for cinephiles and those who need an antidote for their optimism.