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Fay Grim

Play trailer Poster for Fay Grim R 2006 1h 58m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
47% Tomatometer 91 Reviews 57% Popcornmeter 10,000+ Ratings
Many years after her notorious husband, Henry Fool, fled after killing a neighbor, Fay Grim (Parker Posey) receives a visit from CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum), who tells her that Henry is dead, but that some of his journals have been unearthed in France. She sets forth on a globe-trotting odyssey that soon leads to the discovery that he is alive, and his journals are more than they appear to be.
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Fay Grim

Fay Grim

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Critics Consensus

Fay Grim is too concerned with its own farcical premise to present a coherent, involving story.

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Critics Reviews

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Anton Bitel Little White Lies 02/19/2018
Fay's intercontinental quest for the missing, maybe dead Henry is also a search for his now fragmented writings, whose meaning is both constantly evolving and forever evaporating. Go to Full Review
Susan Walker Toronto Star 05/25/2007
3.5/4
Movie sequels rarely work as well as literary serials, but the Henry and Fay movies have the ring of a satisfying trilogy in the making. Go to Full Review
Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader 05/25/2007
The involved backstory and Hartley's own generic music both prove burdensome; the main attraction is the cast's amusing way of handling Hartley's mannerist dialogue and conceits. Go to Full Review
Richard Propes TheIndependentCritic.com 09/07/2020
3.0/4.0
An emotionally and intellectually centered film that will resonate with viewers long after the film has ended. Go to Full Review
Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews 10/16/2014
C+
A disappointing zany character-driven comedy directed by the once promising indie cult auteur Hal Hartley. Go to Full Review
Fernando F. Croce CinePassion 08/27/2009
Shows Hartley shrinking even as he goes global Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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Alain E @AlainE 5d Unfortunately quite grim and improbable. In the first scene Fay enters a Catholic church and has a conversation with the priest. She takes out a cigarette and the priest lights it up with his lighter, at the pews! At some point the CIA also enters the picture (later, not in the church). After twenty minutes I realized that I was wasting my time. The very first scenes with freeze frame had looked promising. On Prime. See more Brian K @CrazyLegs Dec 22 This plays like a David Mamet movie but without the wit of David Mamet. The language is convoluted and stilted and artificial, but sometimes humorous. Posey Parker is the glue that keeps it from flying off into space. The plot is so complicated that it becomes irrelevant. It seems like a stage play that has escaped the theater. The director is so bad at the infrequent action scenes that they just skip them completely and show still frames instead so you get the idea of what was supposed to have happened - and that's about the funniest thing in the movie. I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone See more Kalissa H. @kali_416 Nov 10 Parker Posey is the best part of the movie. See more 08/28/2016 A sendup of sorts of paranoid espionage thrillers plays it straight with a manic energy and more convoluted twists than you can shake a stick at. FIlmed almost exclusively in so many dutch angles it could make Battlefield Earth blush. It is worth the watch for the performances of Parker Posey and Jeff Goldblum, obviously having fun. But the lack of any real substance and no through-line strong enough through all the twists to really feel like it matters. See more 12/17/2015 "Henry Fool" was a strange indie dramedy about a weirdo writer who came into the life of a garbage man and inspired him to also become a weirdo writer. Writer/Director Hal Hartley revisits the characters created in that film 10 years later in "Fay Grim" and, to make things even stranger, turns it all into an international spy thriller. It is one of the strangest things, and I kind of loved it for that. The movie is a tad confusing and not without it's problems, but it is so unique and strange, and so unlike it's preceding film that it becomes something entirely different...it just happens to be inhabited with these quirky odd characters we've met in an entirely different kind of film before. See more 11/10/2015 starring the queen of indie cinema Parker Posey + director hal hartly= good viewing See more Read all reviews
Fay Grim

My Rating

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Movie Info

Synopsis Many years after her notorious husband, Henry Fool, fled after killing a neighbor, Fay Grim (Parker Posey) receives a visit from CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum), who tells her that Henry is dead, but that some of his journals have been unearthed in France. She sets forth on a globe-trotting odyssey that soon leads to the discovery that he is alive, and his journals are more than they appear to be.
Director
Hal Hartley
Producer
Hal Hartley, Michael S. Ryan, Martin Hagemann, Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente
Screenwriter
Hal Hartley
Production Co
Zero Fiction, HDNet, This Is That Productions, Possible Films
Rating
R (Some Sexuality|Language)
Genre
Drama
Original Language
English
Rerelease Date (Theaters)
May 18, 2007
Release Date (Streaming)
May 1, 2008
Box Office (Gross USA)
$61.8K
Runtime
1h 58m