Allure a tough-to-watch take on psychology and abuse
A dark drama about a sexual predator is never an easy thing to watch. But Allure, which was titled A Worthy Companion when it played the Toronto film festival last fall, could have been darker still.
The film’s co-writers and directors, Montreal brothers Carlos and Jason Sanchez, originally planned for the predator to be a man. Re-writing the character as Laura and casting Evan Rachel Wood doesn’t lessen the creep factor as she targets the schoolage Eva (Julia Sarah Stone), but it does make for an interesting modification to the stalker/prey dynamic.
We meet Laura in the opening scene, engaged in anonymous and violent sex in a hotel room. (She’s the one being violent.) She goes straight from that to her job as a house cleaner, working for her father (Denis O’Hare), who’s fed up with covering for her bad behaviour.
At the home of a client she finds Eva listlessly practicing classical music on the piano, although the kid admits she prefers Nirvana. Laura chats her up over that, and the two quickly form a sisterly bond. When Eva has a fight with her mom, Laura swoops in to offer the teen a place to crash, then pressures her into staying.
Karaoke, go-kart racing and other fun times follow. So too does drinking, sex and violence. You can see Eva struggling with her emotions as her new best friend swings between bouts of needy tenderness and extreme jealousy.
The Sanchez brothers are careful not to let Laura off the hook for her behaviour, but they inject notes of complexity and uncertainty into the story. We’re never quite sure, for instance, whether her icy relationship with her dad is all her doing, or whether they have some sordid history. And where’s her mom?
But Wood sells the character at every turn. With Eva, she’s calculating, slyly physical and forever insinuating herself into the life of her young captive. But it’s her moments alone that are the most instructive; the manipulative look never quite drops away, but it becomes diluted with doubt. Laura can act fragile, but she also clearly feels it.
The result is a great acting job but not quite a full fledged story; Allure runs out of things to say before its hour and three quarters are up. But what it does say speaks volumes about human psychology, dependency and abuse.