Review: Blurring the line between fact and fiction, ‘Kate Plays Christine’ probes life and death of TV newscaster

The mysteries of art and suicide become parallel investigations into process in “Kate Plays Christine,” a new documentary in which actor Kate Lyn Sheil prepares to play the role of Christine Chubbuck, a newscaster who killed herself during a live broadcast at a Sarasota, Fla., TV station in July 1974.

Filmmaker Robert Greene, continuing an exploration into the blurring of nonfiction and performance begun with his 2014 hybrid documentary “Actress,” mixes scenes of Sheil honestly researching the faint imprint of Chubbuck’s life with mannered reenactments (starring Sheil) intended to suggest the impossibility of the endeavor. The effect is both strange and sad, as inquests into the unfathomable usually are. (Another movie about Chubbuck, a sincerely made biopic called “Christine,” is also due.)

Sheil, whose Modigliani-like features and magnetic inwardness have strengthened the indie landscape of late, is a sympathetic emotional detective, wandering Sarasota, visiting meaningful locations, and looking for information that she hopes will prevent the part from being just a wig, a dress, and a gunshot. Her interviewees — colleagues, acquaintances — offer tidbits and theories, yet the answer to an everyday figure made remarkable by her final act remains just out of reach. (Chubbuck’s last words, an on-air condemnation of the station’s taste for “blood and guts” stories, sound righteous, but prove a not fully trustworthy clue.) Although Greene swerves unnecessarily into obvious audience indictment at the end, “Kate Plays Christine” makes for a twisty, unsettling probe into our fascination with transforming lives, and deaths, into digestible storytelling.

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‘Kate Plays Christine’

Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes

Not rated

Playing: Laemmle NoHo 7, North Hollywood

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