camera with Ellie, even going so far as to show up at the studio unannounced. When he asks Ellie what motivates her to re-stage scenes immortalized by iconic actors, she opens up about her fascination with the impossibility of ordinary people being the people onscreen, even as the camera allows them to temporarily inhabit that same space. Ellie’s video art could be interpreted as a hybrid of Herbert Ross’ “Play it Again, Sam,” in which Woody Allen’s neurotic protagonist found himself uttering the same words as his idol, Bogie, in “Casablanca,” and Allen’s own “Zelig,” the playful comedy where the filmmaker inserted himself into archival footage.  
Many of the best stretches in “My Art” are the recreations themselves, where Simmons gets to exploit her love of the “Kubrick Stare” in everything from “A Clockwork Orange” to Richard Quine’s “Bell, Book and Candle,” though the camera doesn’t zoom in close enough to replicate the latter film’s unforgettable shot of Kim Novak’s eyes juxtaposed with those of her cat. Of more pertinent interest to Simmons is the female gaze and how it can subvert male fantasies by contextualizing them. Among Ellie’s trio of willing volunteers is John (John Rothman, featured in both “Zelig” and “The Purple Rose of Cairo”), the stepfather of her aforementioned student, who has no shame in admitting that he prefers dating women half his age. It’s no coincidence that Ellie unearths a scene from Irving Pichel’s 1948 farce, “Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid,” for him to perform while filmed by her conspicuously phallic camera. John takes the place of William Powell’s hero, a 50-year-old man hopelessly smitten with a mute mermaid (Ann Blythe) nearly three decades his junior. Even though all of their conversations are one-sided, Powell is convinced that the mermaid understands him better than his own wife does, leading him to compare her “uncomplicated” beauty with that of a child. The dialogue here is deeply unsettling, as Ellie magnifies the absurdity of Powell’s—and, by indirect extension, Allen’s—delusion without having to utter a word herself. Equally memorable is the sequence where Frank and Ellie enact a famous exchange between Gable and Monroe in John Huston’s notorious 1961 picture, “The Misfits.” Only as these characters do Ellie and Frank get to be—well, frank about their inner desires. Monroe isn’t attracted to Gable, but he insists that she give him a chance, while disarming her with a joke. Yet when Frank attempts to improvise his own version of the scene with Ellie, presuming that she may want to start a new life with him, she douses the flames of his infatuation with a sobering blast of cold water.


The final moments of “My Art” may seem tragic at first glance, until we realize that the “happy ending” for this would-be couple is different from what we have come to expect. When Ellie claims that the “only thing I’ve been messing around with is my work” during her time at the summer house, it’s clear that her eyes are also somewhat clouded by illusion. By using Frank as one her muses, he comes to believe that an enduring relationship could potentially bloom between them, but this turns out to be little more than a fantasy fit for celluloid. “You’re too nice,” Ellie correctly informs Frank, whose heart may be wounded but far from broken. Simmons ends her film on an assuredly optimistic note, as Frank and Ellie watch their dreams becoming realized, all the while standing apart, facing separate directions. We are mere weeks into 2018, but I have a feeling the final shot of “My Art” will easily rank among my favorites of the year.