This was an impressive and thoughtfully gripping drama. Its exploration of someone who chose to ‘pass’ as white after traumatic early experiences was fascinating.
One of the best features of the film was the great care taken with details, right from the start. The main character, Neve always wore gloves, she listened to classical music, was always immaculately turned out. But, from the start, there were subtle hints that all was not as it seemed. She hid her characteristic hair (cut very short and with tight material compressing, over which she had a selection of stylish wigs) but as the drama progressed this was clearly itching and uncomfortable. This was a clever way of showing that she could not really totally reject who she essentially was and that to do so was uncomfortable – Perhaps a hint of subconscious guilt? This was also paralleled by her daughter’s hairstyle later in the film.
The sense of living in a false world was also conveyed early on when, driving through her very comfortably smart upper-middle class suburbia, we saw flat-seeming figures of the other home-owners standing stock still outside their homes, as if cardboard cut-outs; certainly not people who were real. These imaginative and stylistically cinematically effective details were a major strength of the film.
But as well as details, the pacing of the film was very effective in its relentless steadiness, building up the tension very well. And I liked the visual detail, for example when the last section of the film was announced on the screen (Family Reunion) the fonts were markedly mixed, changing and clashed with each other which was a very effective visual signpost as to what was happening and what would finally happen in the drama. Similarly, in the second section of the film, an apparently innocuous comment by Neve to her daughter about ‘no phones at the table’ was revealed to be significant, given the focus and subject of the daughter’s phone message.
The ending was both very surprising and yet, in one way, not surprising at all; to say any more might give too much away and it was also, intriguing in that while in one sense there was no full resolution, this did not matter, even though you were left with questions.
The influence of Funny Games was also seen, in this climactic situation but, unlike that film, this was not as chillingly meaningless or the central focus, as in that remarkable piece of cinema.
A couple of details mildly irritated; why was there a large sign outside the school where Neve worked sating ‘Private School’. This seemed unnecessarily simplistic. If the film as a whole had been far more consciously symbolic, then that would make sense but here it just jarred. And surely, living in the area and with the lifestyle they had they would have had some sort of home security system?