Chloe Sevigny’s West Coast Blues

ABOVE: CHLOE SEVIGNY IN MAGIC HOUR

“I’m lonely here, I’m really lonely,” says Chloë Sevigny into the phone. Los Angeles is a bubble. She misses New York.

Such is her character’s preoccupation in the short film Magic Hour, released today to coincide with the 2013 Urs Fischer exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. For most of the film, Sevigny paces, phone-to-ear, in a sundrenched room wearing a silky pajama jumper. Though in a pleasant setting, she is very unhappy. It isn’t clear why she is in LA, but it’s not somewhere she belongs: no restaurants to walk to, no chance encounters, everyone’s shallow—even the constant sunshine is “penetrating” and “scorching.”

One begins to feel sorry for her, and Los Angeles-to-New York transplants might certainly empathize. But, wait for it: she’s not as lonely as it might seem, and one can’t help but wonder how much she wishes herself miserable.

Directed and co-written by Tara Subkoff, Magic Hour is produced and co-written by Tatiana Von Fursteberg. The Urs Fischer exhibition opens at MOCA on Sunday, and goes through August 19.