One’s ability to enjoy the dark comedy Cora Bora depends entirely on their tolerance for non-stop abrasiveness and selfishness, and that’s by design. It’s not a setting that’s to everyone’s speed or taste, so this should serve as fair warning going into director Hannah Pearl Utt and writer Rhianon Jones’ story of an entitled, delusional, and confrontational young woman steamrolling their way through everyone around them. Cora Bora is another addition to the canon of films where an asshole learns to be less of an asshole via a series of personal revelations and reflections, but the film never fully justifies its full on “big bummer energy.”
A wonderfully cast and perfectly game Megan Stalter stars as Cora, a Portland, Oregon transplant currently living in Los Angeles, where she’s failing to make an impression as a musician with her poorly written songs about failed relationships. Although she will sleep with any willing man or woman that crosses her path, Cora always insists that she’s in a devoted, but open relationship with her love, Justine (Jojo T. Gibbs), who still resides in Portland. When Cora fears that Justine has abandoned their long distance relationship to take up with a new girlfriend, Riley (Ayden Mayeri), she hops on the next flight back to Portland to crash her beau’s graduation party. While Justine and Riley try their best to be accommodating to their unexpected house guest, Cora doesn’t return to a warm reception, something exacerbated by her massive ego and rampant irresponsibility.
There’s a tested formula at work in Cora Bora. It doesn’t revolve around wondering why anyone would want to be in any kind of relationship with someone who treats people so terribly, but rather in the journey of said person reaching rock bottom and realizing they need to atone for their actions. The main character in these stories has to reach a breaking point beyond which they can’t continue with their lifestyle and attitude. Jones’ script has plenty of evidence against Cora’s character being a loving and caring human person (love bombing, only passing interest in a pet she insists is her’s, constant negging), but comes up short in providing a compelling bedrock for their redemption. By every metric, everyone is better off without them, even her parents, and although the eventual reveal of past traumas is certainly sad and relatable, it’s not enough to make up for the lack of narrative ingenuity throughout Cora Bora or to redeem the character in any way.
95% of Cora Bora relies on Stalter’s ability to confidently smile and bullshit her way through any situation, regardless of how wrong the character is, and the actress proves to be the film’s biggest ace in the hole. Stalter gives her co-stars plenty of material to fire back at Cora, with Gibbs and Mayeri in particular making major impressions as the put-upon couple the audience actually wants to see succeed. Less effective, but still somewhat charming is Cora’s meet-cute flirtation with Tom (Manny Jacinto), a guy she meets on the flight who she continually keeps running into. That relationship is very basic, and while Jacinto is likeable as Tom, his character is paper thin and cliched. Still, the interplay Jacinto is able to carry on with Stalter is able to paper over some of the material’s shortcomings.
Utt also provides some solid direction, keeping things at a good pace and finding innovative, visually interesting ways to stage sequences that could’ve seemed static in the hands of a lesser stylist. But none of that is still enough to make Cora Bora anything less than perfunctory and unoriginal in its approach to cringe comedy. There’s plenty of nastiness to be found in Cora’s exploits, but the fire that fuels this human wrecking ball is in short supply. Once the time comes to build sympathy for its devil – by way of a so-so reveal and a way too long sequence set at a sex commune in the woods that’s short on laughs and tension – Cora Bora has exhausted much of its good will, and the viewer never gets enough back in return.
Cora Bora is now available on VOD.
