Florence Pugh plays a 19th-century caregiver warring Catholic mysticism with aesculapian facts successful Netflix's austere play drama.
Leah Greenblatt
"Anna O'Donnell doesn't eat." That is the communicative a caregiver named Elizabeth Wright (Florence Pugh) has been told — not that her aesculapian grooming allows her to judge it for a infinitesimal — and wherefore she's been summoned from London to a distant colony successful Ireland successful Sebastián Lelio's moody, cloistered play (in constricted merchandise now, and connected Netflix Nov. 16).
It's 1862, not acold retired from the Great Famine, and the show of a British national successful immoderate benignant of azygous is inactive not peculiarly invited by the locals. The feeling is mutual: Elizabeth, oregon Lib, arsenic she yet allows her young diligent to telephone her, doesn't cognize wherefore she's been brought to this impoverished backwater for a lawsuit that intelligibly seems to beryllium based connected faith, not science, oregon whether it's adjacent worthy trying to asseverate her expertise successful a spot wherever a woman's connection is hardly taken much earnestly than a dog's.
But inactive she agrees to observe 11-year-old Anna (Kíla Lord Cassidy) for 2 weeks without interference, splitting shifts with a astir soundless nun brought successful to stock the duties (Why a nun? Lib asks; "Welcome to Ireland," comes the wry reply). And Anna seems similar a saccharine girl, if an unusually devout one; she survives, she promises Lib beatifically, connected "manna from heaven," much soul-filling than immoderate earthly sustenance. That's impossible, of course, though the sheet of section (and naturally, all-male) grandees successful complaint of the investigation, including an officious doc (Toby Jones) and the O'Donnell's solemn parish clergyman (an underused Ciarán Hinds), each person their ain much oregon little ridiculous theories.
The Wonder
Credit: Aidan Monaghan/Netflix
The longer Lib spends circling the girl's secret, the further she seems from the source, though she finds that hard to covey to the writer astatine her boarding location who's besides travel up for London determined to ferret retired the truth, a rakish disbeliever named William Byrne (The Souvenir's Tom Burke, the lone 1 halfway enjoying himself.) To the villagers who travel to wage tribute, oregon simply bask successful the beingness of this sanctified kid who appears to person her ain nonstop enactment to God, Anna is "a jewel, a wonder"; to William, she's a "wee faker."
For Lib, she's a puzzle to beryllium solved and past slowly, an entity of existent sympathy. Maybe that has thing to bash with her ain pain; successful public, she's brusque and guarded, but unsocial successful her country astatine night, the pistillate who has ensured her hosts that she's a childless widow enacts a unusual ritual, 1 that involves the careful, astir ineffable placement of a small brace of knit babe booties and a spoonful of immoderate dense syrup (laudanum? heroin?) that makes her swoon.
There person been galore books and deliberation pieces astir the 19th-century improvement of alleged "fasting girls" — mostly adolescents caught up successful a spiritual fervor, oregon much likely, simply chafing astatine the constrictive confines of their Victorian lives. Novelist Emma Donoghue (Room) based her 2016 caller The Wonder connected 1 of those stories, and its taxable substance seems similar ripe worldly for Lelio, the Oscar-winning Chilean auteur whose acquisition for inhabiting the pistillate regard crystallized successful films similar A Fantastic Woman, Gloria, and Disobedience. Pugh, too, is beauteous overmuch perfectly cast, an histrion with specified a keen affectional beingness that she tends to chopped done pretense and triviality similar a blistery knife.
The sumptuous cinematography, by Ari Wegner (The Power of the Dog, Zola), makes the scenery look similar a Brönte novel, afloat of windswept moors and flickering, fire-lit shadows. The story, though, feels some little bold and little afloat formed than its cardinal star's performance, and Lelio chooses for reasons chartless to framework it each done a meta modern lens — bookending the movie with a self-conscious narration astir "telling stories" and pulling backmost to uncover the workplace set, with each its scaffolding and wires and backlot detritus. It's an unusual prime (aren't each movies stories?) and not a peculiarly integrated 1 for a filmmaker whose ain imaginativeness has been truthful chiseled and intimate successful different films. Instead, the sparse, muted publication hangs mostly connected Pugh and atmosphere, an elusive minor-key mystery. Grade: B
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