“Primetime.” (A24)
The film is at its strongest when it broadens its focus beyond Hansen himself. As the show’s popularity grows, Oppenheim becomes increasingly interested in the incentives surrounding it. The decision to position the program as a primetime competitor to ABC’s “Lost” reveals how thoroughly ratings have become part of the equation. Networks pursue viewers, producers pursue relevance, talent pursues visibility and audiences reward the enterprise with their attention.
That ambiguity also produces the film’s most significant limitation. Oppenheim repeatedly raises compelling questions about exploitation, celebrity and public humiliation, yet often proves more interested in sustaining uncertainty than interrogating it. The film observes these contradictions with remarkable acuity, but many of its most provocative ideas remain suggestive rather than fully developed. At times, that ambiguity enriches the film’s uneasy fascination with its subject; at others, it leaves its sharpest insights frustratingly out of reach.
Even so, the film’s accomplishments are difficult to dismiss. Pattinson’s fearless performance and Oppenheim’s command of atmosphere elevate the material beyond conventional biographical drama. As the film widens its focus beyond Hansen himself, exposure begins to operate in two directions. Like Hansen’s recurring refrain, “I will undress you; you will undress me,” the act of exposure becomes reciprocal, revealing not only those placed beneath its gaze but also the culture that depends on their exposure.