No rating
Warning: This film features a lot
of quickly flashing images, which could trigger epilepsy in some viewers
Constrained within a strict all
girls’ school, beautiful and alluring Abbie, and rebellious, troubled Lydia, are
best friends, struggling through the painful years of adolescence. When a
tragedy occurs, Lydia begins to suffer fainting fits, an ailment that soon
spreads throughout the school, affecting teachers and pupils alike.
This is a very strange film. At
times it is beautiful, at times deeply disturbing… and at other times just
wholly frustrating. Let’s begin with the positives: Maisie Williams and
Florence Pugh are excellent as Lydia and Abbie respectively. Williams, is at
times venomous and cruel, but at other points strangely fragile and lost whilst
Pugh is charismatic and genteel, her Abbie placed on a pedestal by Lydia and
worshipped. Maxine Peake (although criminally under-utilised) is perfect as
Lydia’s mother, living out her life encased within their small home, watching
the news at high volume, apparently un-phased by her daughter’s illness.
Indeed, all the characters are engaging, but they all remain completely
unknowable to us – we, as viewers, are given only the merest of hints as to
what their various motives might be, and to me this felt like a great weakness.
However, after the performances, and the excellent shots of the lake and tree, the
film becomes almost too ‘artsy’ for its own good.
The fainting moments are obviously
meant to be shocking and strange, but when multiple girls start keeling over in
quick succession, the whole façade becomes wholly ridiculous – there was a
ripple of mirth in the screening I was in during one particular scene, which is
clearly not the desired effect. The final act is undoubtedly overblown, with a
rather necessary incestuous scene, a forced confession from Lydia’s mother, and
a final visit to the tree in which Lydia and Abbie carved their names before
the sickness broke out. Yes, this final scene with the tree and the water could
almost certainly be read as symbolic, the final fall followed by baptism and
rebirth, but by this point I was feeling rather unforgiving towards the film,
and becoming more aware of how stiff my legs felt as opposed to the tension on
screen. I found it alienating from the start (perhaps we are meant to – we never
break down these characters and ‘see’ what is inside them), but whereas the
feeling of alienation left me in Birdman it
remained throughout here – I found the characters unsympathetic (although well-acted)
and the whole narrative so fractured by artistic shots of wet leaves and the
gnarled bark of the oak tree, that it felt as though I was looking through a
troubled teenager’s GSCE Art coursework instead of a feature film.
I have no doubt that some people
will ‘get it’, as it were, and that if I were to sit down and study it properly
upon multiple viewings, I would probably be able to get more from it.
Unfortunately, and despite the best efforts from the cast, I will not be giving
this film a second viewing, and thus its mysteries will be ever unknown to me.
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