My New Gun

A deceptive, quirky and amusing black comedy from the independent sector. Set in upmarket wood-clad suburban New Jersey, it follows events when a housewife (Lane, in her best performance to date) is given a pearl-handled revolver by her nerd husband for her protection (and against her wishes). Attractive next door neighbour Skippy (Collins) asks to borrow the gun for unexplained reasons, she agrees, and the two become implicated. There are many questions. What, for instance, has Skippy's strange mother (Harper), a Country & Western singer, to do with all this? Cinematographer Ed Lachman gives it all a bright look, to augment the feeling of unsettling disingenuousness. For this is a film without explanations, more 'screw-loose' than 'screwball', with a pinch of Lynch.