There’s not a trace of her slacker persona from the web series-turned-sitcom in her character Lucy, a young woman whose feelings of failure at being unable to fall pregnant disappear when her husband’s connections allow them to skip the long waitlist for New York’s top fertility doctor.
The attention-grabbing opening plunges almost into Argento territory as Pawel Pogorzelski, the brilliantly suggestive cinematographer on Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar, floods a sleek Manhattan office building in throbbing reds and blues that consume the night.
Director Lee, who co-wrote the screenplay with Glazer and was a frequent Broad City collaborator, doesn’t quite sustain that bold stylistic stamp, even if the perturbing intimacy and insidious angles of the visuals go a long way toward masking the uneven tone.
John has developed his own insemination method combining IUI and IVF technology, and one massive syringe shot later, Lucy is throwing up at the office.
As her pregnancy progresses, Lucy’s mounting suspicions go beyond the good doctor and the sugary-sweet icicle Nurse Dawn, extending to her husband as Adrian’s behavior around her becomes shifty.
Is she paranoid or onto some kind of conspiratorial plan to take control of her pregnancy? The film teases out that question both in the crescendo of panicked isolation in Glazer’s compelling performance and the shadiness of everyone around her.
A Peter Pan motif also seems unsatisfyingly integrated, even if the song “Who Am I?” from Leonard Bernstein’s score for the 1950 Broadway production provides a bewitchingly odd reflection of Lucy’s state of mind as she struggles with a reality too disturbing to comprehend.
False Positive might not quite stick the landing, but it’s a juicy genre entry about how women’s reproductive systems are treated like coveted real estate — expertly crafted in terms of its visual command and well-acted by a strong ensemble.