Paul Andrew Williams’s characteristic debut was known as London to Brighton (2006), however the British director has by no means been a lot inquisitive about capital cities. His newest, Dragonfly, is one other instance of this, being a darkish, low-key drama concerning the methods wherein the unnoticed lives of suburban individuals could make shocking headlines. In a direct manner, it’s a sister piece to his provocative 2010 house invasion movie Cherry Tree Lane, wherein—pre-empting Adolescence—a middle-class couple’s humdrum reside is turned the other way up when they’re inexplicably attacked by violent teenage rebels with none obvious trigger.
In actuality, although—and regardless of the blood spilt each onscreen and off—it seems to be extra just like the movie Williams made in 2012. Known as Music for Marion, it starred Terence Stamp as an emotionally shut-down widower who joins a choir to pay homage to his late spouse (Vanessa Redgrave). It wasn’t a industrial success, and Dragonfly might not be both, however the brand new movie makes higher use of that movie’s components: themes of loneliness, remorse, bereavement, self-worth and household. And like Music for Marion, it has fairly the solid: two Oscar nominees enjoying simply outdoors their age vary and past their consolation zones.
There’s little to no vainness right here within the central pairing of Brenda Blethyn, because the aged widow Elsie, and Andrea Riseborough, as her unemployed neighbor Colleen, and the 2 very totally different actors’ kinds work completely collectively. The movie’s opening ten minutes units up the 2 girls’s lives with a poignant economic system: dwelling in back-to-back bungalows, they lead eerily comparable lives, like ghosts. Elsie had a life as soon as and misses it bitterly now, however Colleen by no means had a life in any respect. “So bizarre,” says Colleen, fairly intuitively, when she first visits Elsie’s house. “It’s precisely like mine, simply the opposite manner spherical.”
Colleen has lived subsequent door to Elsie for some 13 years earlier than the story begins, and it’s not fairly instantly clear why she ought to all of a sudden pop spherical to supply her providers—does Elsie need something from the store? However Colleen has been watching the procession of carers that go to Elsie from each day, and he or she sees a lady who deserves greater than the clock-watching company nurses who come to present her showers she doesn’t want and meals that isn’t doing her any good in any respect. There’s, as they are saying, a spot out there, and Colleen strikes quick to fill it, one thing Elsie appreciates and which helps the as soon as dowdy lady blossom.
In contrast even to the slow-burn of Williams’ final movie Bull (2021), the movie takes child steps to disclose itself as a style movie, however the rating by Raffertie is forward of the motion at each flip. Nothing will ever actually be revealed or defined by the tip, however Williams’ script units up so many desirable methods wherein these two very totally different girls — the comparatively posh Elsie and the totally struggling-class Colleen — ring a bell. And key to that’s the introduction of Elsie’s son John (Jason Watkins). Center-aged and but nonetheless pathetically upwardly cellular, John is the harbinger right here, and his nasty bourgeois values, coming between Elsie and Colleen, prove to the be the meat within the sandwich.
As an alternative of Chekhov’s gun on this situation we have now a canine, and Colleen’s incapacity to regulate her “mentalist” crossbreed Sabre doesn’t go effectively for both of them, resulting in a really violent denouement. However Williams’ movie shouldn’t be a lot involved with the pressure of attending to that and extra concerning the understanding; Andrea Riseborough is simply so good at this, bringing the A-game she delivered to 2022’s To Leslie, however this time with a extra jarring child-like innocence, mirrored in her pasty, wan complexion. The identical goes for Brenda Blethyn, so effortlessly affecting as a spouse and mom diminished to turning into a shopper to the welfare state, a degradation that Colleen simply can’t start to tolerate.
Williams’ movies typically finish with a query mark, and that doesn’t all the time fulfill. With Dragonfly, nonetheless, the questions posed are ethical and well timed, and they’re going to grasp round in your head lengthy after as you consider girls like Colleen and Elsie and the issues of their lives which might be lacking. It’s a mom of a narrative.
Title: Dragonfly
Competition: Tribeca (Worldwide Narrative Competitors)
Director/screenwriter: Paul Andrew Williams
Forged: Andrea Riseborough, Brenda Blethyn, Jason Watkins
US Gross sales: AMP Worldwide
Working time: 1 hr 38 minutes
