admin A concept horror with purpose, Remi Weekes’s meditation on loss, discrimination, and the refugee crisis plays out in a dilapidated house on the outskirts of London, the new home of a couple (the wondrous Wunmi Mosaku and Sope Dirisu) who have fled war-torn South Sudan. Their young daughter, who perished on the journey across the English Channel, haunts their memories, just as their neighbors grow hostile, and another supernatural force seems to be tearing holes through their walls and trying to drive a wedge between them. It’s a visceral manifestation of their unspeakable pain, made even more poignant by their attempts to adapt to life in Britain while also yearning for home and clinging to traditions. In light of the current government’s approach to asylum and immigration, it’s an urgent and necessary watch, perhaps more so than ever before.
Elena Ferrante’s books have long yielded rich, cinematic adaptations—HBO’s multi-season My Brilliant Friend, Netflix’s captivating miniseries The Lying Life of Adults—and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s astonishingly accomplished feature debut is no different: a layered and complex study of female ambition, disappointment, rage, doubt and, above all, the conflicting impulses of motherhood. At its heart is Leda, played in flashbacks by the luminous Jessie Buckley as an exasperated young academic with two daughters to entertain, and later as a wistful, now-established university professor and translator by Olivia Colman who, when the film opens, is holidaying in Greece. There she encounters the enigmatic Nina (Dakota Johnson), a mother whose three-year-old suddenly goes missing, triggering a period of intense reflection in Leda about the responsibilities she herself relinquished, and the joys and sadness that brought her. It’s wonderfully clear-eyed and non-judgemental, providing a crucial jumping-off point for wider discussions about the impossible expectations placed upon women.
