The start of the feature of Paul Andrew Williams was called London in Brighton (2006), but the British director has never been very interested in capital. His last, Dragonflyis another example of that, being a dark and discreet drama on the way in which the unnoticed life of the suburbs can make the headlines surprising. Directly, it is a sister play of his film provocative from 2010 at home Cherry routesin which – Adolescence—In Live Humdrum of a middle -class couple is upset when they are inexplicably attacked by violent adolescent rebels without any apparent cause.
In reality, however – and despite the blood spread on the screen and away – it looks more like the film that Williams made in 2012. Called. Song for MarionHe gave off Terence Stamp as an emotionally closed widower who joins a choir to pay tribute to his late wife (Vanessa Redgrave). It was not a commercial success, and Dragonfly It may not be either, but the new film makes better use of the ingredients of this film: themes of loneliness, regret, mourning, self-esteem and family. And like Song for MarionHe has the casting: two nominees with the Oscars playing just outside their age group and beyond their comfort zones.
There is no or no vanity here in the central twinning of Brenda Blethyn, as an elderly widow Elsie, and Andrea Riseborough, as an unemployed neighbor Colleen, and the styles of the two very different actors work perfectly. The first ten minutes of the film sets up the lives of the two women with a poignant economy: living in consecutive bungalows, they lead strangely similar lives, such as ghosts. Elsie has had a life once and the lack of it bitterly now, but Colleen has never had life at all. “So weird,” says Colleen, quite intuitively, when she visits Elsie’s house. “It’s just like mine, just the opposite.”
Colleen lived next to Elsie for about 13 years before the start of the story, and it is not quite clear why she should suddenly take a look to offer her services – Elsie wants something from the shop? But Colleen looked at the procession of caregivers who visit Elsie day by day, and she sees a woman who deserves more than the nurses of the agency who watch the clock who come to give her showers she does not need and food that does not make her at all. There is, as they say, a gap on the market, and Colleen moves quickly to fill it, something that Esie appreciates and which helps the woman formerly Dowdy flower.
Compared even to the latest film by Williams’s latest film Bull (2021), the film makes baby’s steps to reveal itself as a gender film, but the partition of Flattia is ahead of the action every turn. Nothing will ever do it Really Be revealed or explained at the end, but the Williams script sets up many fascinating ways including these two very different women – the relatively chic Elsie and the Colleen definitively in difficulty – strike an agreement. And the key is the introduction of Elsie John’s son (Jason Watkins). Average age and yet still pathetically mobile, John is the warning sign here, and his unpleasant bourgeois values, between Elsie and Colleen, prove to be meat in the sandwich.
Instead of Chekhov’s weapon in this scenario, we have a dog, and Colleen’s inability to control his “mentalist” cross -save does not go well for any of them, leading to a very violent outcome. But Williams’ film does not care so much about the tension to get there and more on the understanding; Andrea Riseborough is so good in this area, bringing the A-Game that it brought to 2022 In LeslieBut this time with a more discordant child innocence, reflected in his pasty and Wan complexion. The same goes for Brenda Blethyn, effortlessly affecting as a wife and a reduced mother to become a customer in the welfare state, a degradation that Colleen can simply not start to tolerate.
Williams’ films often end in a question mark, and that does not always satisfy. With DragonflyHowever, the questions asked are moral and timely, and they will stay in your head long after thinking of women like Colleen and Elsie and things in their life. She is a mother of a story.
Title: Dragonfly
Festival: Tribeca (international narrative competition)
Director / screenwriter: Paul Andrew Williams
Casting: Andrea Riseborough, Brenda Blethyn, Jason Watkins
American sales: International AMP
Operating time: 1 h 38 minutes
