'Presence' Review: Soderbergh Goes Ghostly, With Just Enough Gusto [TIFF 2024]
the american auteur’s Latest Experimental Film Can’t escape feeling like a technical exercise primarily, but is an entertaining one at that.
Many an auteur have tried their hand at a ghost story, with renowned American auteur Steven Soderbergh the latest among them. Throughout his extensive career, Soderbergh has done a little bit of everything, and has constantly pushed the limits and boundaries of filmmaking along the way. His latest, Presence is no exception. The film is a very unique take on the tried and true ‘haunted-house’ story, with the entirety of the film being shot from an omniscient, ominous presence, believed to be the spirit of a late friend of the central family who move into a new home.
Presence is a ton of fun formally, with Soderbergh playing with perspective and camera throughout the whole thing. Not only is this formal change interesting, but what is even more interesting is that most of the film is comprised of “cut-aways,” or rather, continuous cuts to black after each scene finishes. On paper, this sounds like it could be grating and make for an uneven film. However, Soderbergh uses this very loose structure to accentuate the thematic aspects and jump ground quickly in the story, both of which work very well in the film’s favor.
At first, the titular presence, or the film’s point-of-view, for turn of phrase, starts off as being more of a wholly observant window into the story, akin to a ‘fly-on-the-wall’ approach. In these moments, we get to see some more introspective moments with Chris (Chris Sullivan) and Rebecca (Lucy Liu), and both veteran performers are able to use these brief moments to establish a sense of realism and are able to get you invested into the narrative beyond the titular presence element. This changes in scenes in which Chloe (Callina Liang) is separated from her family, isolated in her bedroom, struggling emotionally with starting her life anew in this new home, and also grieving the loss of her friend. After a few supernatural interventions from the presence, Chloe vaguely starts to put the pieces together and discerns that this presence affecting her house could be her late friend.
The relationship between the melodrama of this family readjusting their lives becomes more and more intrinsically linked with the voyeuristic presence, making for a series of great comedic cut-aways, and eventually, the presence becomes more of an active agent in the narrative, intervening and changing the lives of characters toward the end. This supernatural, unexplained deus-ex machina does not feel as if it is an imaginary resolution to the narrative, despite quite literally being so, a testament to Soderbergh’s craftmanship and trusty hand on the proverbial directorial wheel. The film’s actual ending is likely to rub audiences the wrong way, feeling almost like a very last-minute, left-field decision to accentuate the very subtle and underlying profoundity of the piece as a whole.
Though it can feel a little aimless at times, and cannot completely escape feeling like Soderbergh playing with the resources available to him, Presence is quite hard to be too mad at. It delivers a engaging and short story with a ton of effective comedic and dramatic moments, and given the well-known work ethic of Soderbergh, this was probably something he made in the span of a week or so, and is hard not to admire.