Breeding – and bad blood – runs through the rarefied world of this twisted tale of female teen friendship. In a plot that unfolds like the heady connection of Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures viewed through the cool, dispassionate lens of Whit Stillman, two privileged misfit girls rekindle a friendship. Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Amanda (Olivia Cooke, as trickily impressive here as she was as in The Limehouse Golem) were childhood friends who drifted apart. Now Lily is struggling with an overbearing stepfather and academic woes, while Amanda, intriguingly, feels no emotions whatsoever. The hapless foil to these girls who have everything, and simultaneously nothing, is Tim (the late Anton Yelchin, in his final role), a no-hoper with big dreams and a tenuous grip on reality.
Elegant, cruel and precise in its commentary on the turmoil inherent in being a teenage girl, the film works brilliantly up until the final act, its mordant, manicured savagery heightened by a primal score. But the conclusion relies on Amanda acting in a way that seems far-fetched, even for a nihilistic sociopath. A character with no emotion is not the same as a character with no logical motivation, after all. Still, this is an eye-catching calling card for first-time writer-director Cory Finley, and a reminder of how great a loss to cinema was Yelchin’s untimely death.
