Swiss actor and film-maker Lisa Brühlmann, known in Britain for stylishly directing episodes of the TV programme Killing Eve, finally has her debut film, from 2017, released in the UK. The film looks at first like a young girl’s Euro-arthouse teen awakening, full of damaged sexuality, but it gradually becomes a body-horror romance in the manner of David Cronenberg, with a worrying hint of Ed Wood Jr. The corporeal surreality could be read as a metaphor for menstruation or depression or abuse, but it is presented as true and comes across as perfunctory and a bit flippant.
Mia (Luna Wedler) is a shy 15-year-old who has just arrived in town and has to negotiate the horrors of a new high school. In time-honoured movie style, she tries hanging out with the mean-girl clique and finally becomes accepted by them, particularly the queen bitch, Gianna (Zoë Pastelle Holthuizen). In a sad attempt to be supercool and impress them, Mia hooks up with a middle-aged man in a seedy hotel room. But something is very wrong: she has strange marks on her legs, the skin on her toes seems to be joining up and she has weird yearning memories of the ocean.
On a realist level, there are flaws: having been terrified and upset by Mia’s behaviour, would her parents really leave her alone in the house for the weekend while they go away for a wedding? Something awful would surely happen and duly does. When the big reveal happens, I wondered if perhaps a little more of the budget should have been spent on the special creature effects. It is flawed, but has a good performance by Wedler.
