THE WONDER
Fast friends…
Chilean director Sebastián Lelio won an Oscar for 2017’s A Fantastic Woman, while Florence Pugh was nominated for one for her work in Little Women. There’s a pleasing synchronicity, then, that they should now join forces on a story about a fantastic little woman: an 11-year-old girl in 19th-century Ireland who, it is claimed, has survived for months without eating.
Hoax or miracle? That’s for Pugh’s Lib Wright to decide, her no-nonsense nurse having been shipped over from England by the governors of the girl’s village to fathom if there is divinity or deception at hand. Stern, widowed and steeped in scientific rationalism, Lib initially treats the child’s claims that she is living on “manna from heaven” with scepticism. The longer that Anna (Kíla Lord Cassidy) goes without food, however, the more Lib is forced to examine her own beliefs and traumas – not to mention the dubious morality of a carer standing idle while a patient elects to starve.
Adapted by Emma Donoghue (alongside Lelio and Lady Macbeth scripter Alice Birch) from her own 2016 bestseller, The Wonder wastes little time establishing the oppositions (faith/ reason, Irish/English, feminine nurturing versus masculine officialdom) that will propel its narrative towards its potentially divisive conclusion. Even within those strict parameters, however, it still contrives to conjure a spectral allure of mystery. Take the disconcerting portrait of Anna’s late brother, or the pair of baby’s booties Lib keeps beside her secreted bottle of opium, all hinting at a twilight world where the restless dead keep silent watch over the living.
A framing device that reveals from the off the constructed sets and artifice on which the film depends, together with a ghostly omniscient voiceover from cast member Niamh Algar, adds a knowing element of theatricality to the piece. If anything, though, this renders it even more intriguing. Lelio has transmuted the real-life cases of fasting girls on which Donoghue based her novel into a potent exploration of the places a staunch conviction can take us.
Leading lady Pugh has been on such a roll of late that it’s surely tempting fate to declare this the finest performance she has yet given. Suffice to say she is simply sensational, infusing every scene with a soulful intelligence that is truly a wonder to behold.
THE VERDICT Plenty of food for thought in Leilo’s latest, plus another Pugh turn to savour.