Maternal stories were highlights at Sundance 2022
Sundance 2022 has offered a wealth of different kinds of stories and themes, particularly the female-centred films which have been some of the better options at the festival this year. Four of the best ones turned contemplations about motherhood (whether wanted or unwanted) into rewarding stories about the women at their centre, and the worst of the societies around them. These four films are bound by intelligent and confident explorations of what it means to be a woman in the world, whether a genre-exercise like the audacious horror film “Resurrection”; the meditative French period drama “Happening,” where an unexpected pregnancy gives way to a different kind of “horror” film; the horror of reality in the Ukrainian “Klondike”; or the harrowing reality for Black mothers in the United States as seen in “Aftershock”.
Many films at Sundance have attempted the marriage of horror and social issues, with some audacious imaging or shocking story-beats. Few of them were as successful as Andrew Semans’ “Resurrection”. Of the four films here, it’s the only by a male director and there’s a level of perversity to its exploration of a woman who may (or may not be) losing her mind that gave me pause initially. But “Resurrection” lingers, in the best ways. Even when it begins to upset. Whether in lensing, or performance, or arcs, it’s impossible not be impressed by a film with such firm and unwavering commitment to its premise – no matter where that leaves. In the sharp thriller, single-mother Margaret is living a pleasant and well-ordered life. Her daughter is about to go off to college, she’s a successful career woman and even the adulterous tryst with a co-worker feels like something which she controls rather than something which leaves her as a pining “other-woman” type. The peace of her ordered life is interrupted by a shadow from the past that takes her back to the chaotic uncertainty of her teenage years and upends the calm of the present as “Resurrection” becomes a consistently surprising, unnerving “guess-what-happens-next” kind of thriller.
“Resurrection” will likely be remembered most for Rebecca Hall’s central performance as Margaret which is the most recent in a long-line of reminders that she is one of the most capable performers around. In 2021, Hall’s “Passing” was the highlight of Sundance, with her behind-the-camera writing and direction some of the year’s best. With “Resurrection”, she is back in front of the camera and brings the same surety, exactness and skill to her work. It’s a gruelling task for any performer, but it’s a performance that is a gift to Semans. In Hall, he has found a performer who can confidently turn any potential nebulous idea into something full of clarity. The first act kicks into a gear with a lengthy monologue from Hall that demands a level of trust from the audience. It works because we believe in her as much as Semans does. There is no falsity in this performance, and so she anchors the film at every turn.
“Resurrection” plays around with a number of themes. It offers an intriguing look at how abuse can trap you even after you’ve escaped it, while its brief scenes in a staid bureaucratic office are a sharp reminder of the rot in contemporary working opportunities. But it is motherhood that’s most on its mind. Tim Roth does excellent work as the malevolent shadow from Margaret’s past, striking the right note of repulsive and sad that counters Hall’s surety. At moments you think that it can’t quite make good on its premise as the middle section threatens to buckle under the weight. But in a climactic scene that is consistently disorienting and shocking, the commitment to the limits of its body-horror sensibilities is astoundingly impressive. “Resurrection” is sincerely its own thing, and avoids any over-emphasising of metaphor or playing provocateur for its own sake. Instead, it looks clear eyed into its premise. And at its centre, “Resurrection” offers the gift of Rebecca Hall’s excellence.
While motherhood acts as a reprieve from the worst of the world in “Resurrection,” in “Happening”, the promise of motherhood is a dangerous thing. Audrey Diwan’s drama, cowritten with Marcia Romano and Anne Berest, had its world-premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2021 before arriving at Sundance and emerges as one of the best films of the festival. Its presentation of 1963 France, where abortions are harshly criminalised, manages to work as both a glimpse of a former world, and as a reminder of the realities of today without being cloying, obvious or trite. Its exploration of what it means to be a woman captures a note of urgency that feels lacking in other social-dramas at Sundance this year even though its canvas is deliberately modest. The film concerns the bright student Anne whose scholarly hopes are interrupted when she gets pregnant. With Anne having no way of getting a legal abortion and with little help from friends, family or the baby’s father, the meditative character study turns into a horror film of isolation as every other person in her world becomes a threat.
“Happening” is impressive for its thoughtful awareness of its own parameters. Diwan has hyper-focused her gaze on Anne, giving actress Anamaria Vartolomei the kind of role (she is in almost every scene) that should mark a great career ahead of her. Rather than overextend itself as some kind of overzealous thesis on all society, or all the world, by making Anne’s story so specific in its exploration of how a single life can become upended, “Happening” becomes impressive in its singularity. Laurent Tangy’s camera follows Anne at various moments in her life – at dinner with her parents, out with friends, in her classroom, and pleading with an uncaring doctor. As the film goes on, she becomes more and more isolated and the initial gentleness of this period-gaze turns into something unnerving and terrifying. “Happening” is a thoughtful, searing, confident and angry exploration of the ways that women are isolated by the patriarchy. Diwan’s restrained direction meets her incisive script, slowly turning this from a gentle character study into a heartrending horror film with an emotional acuity that feels propulsive and stirring.
The running theme of motherhood (wanted or unwanted) linked with the horror of the world continues with “Klondike” written and directed by Ukrainian filmmaker Maryna Er Gorbach. In it a young couple find themselves forced to contemplate the political pressures of the world they live during the Russo-Ukrainian War. Gorbach’s film is a thoughtful and evocative engagement with real-world politics that finds a clear-eyed way of forcing the audience to consider the worst of the world. The film opens with Tolik and Irka, husband and wife, imagining dreams of the future. By the end, the pair are living in a nightmare that feels unflinchingly exhausting to watch. The couple live on the border between the two warring countries. At one point, an entire wall of their house is eviscerated, leaving a gaping hole for much of the film. Still, Irka
refuses to leave. She wants to remain here, with her pregnancy almost at full term. This will lead to complications by the end, we know. And so we watch with bated breath as Irka tries to navigate her husband’s own political ideas with her younger brother Yaryk.
This is harrowing and punishing and anger inducing but it’s not just a real-world context being used to create affect. Oksana Cherkashyna centres the film with her performance as Irka, offering a defiant surety that convinces us of this woman’s state of mind. But more than character and thematic focus, “Klondike” is more impressive than a number of English-language entries at Sundance this year that have tried to hang their filmic banality on topical importance. But the filmmaking here meets the themes in ways that show actual filmic creativity. The camera moves through these spaces as if dreading what comes next. How do you show a world that’s destined for tragedy? By turning the camera into a tool that feels excruciatingly unwilling to show you what comes next. It knows the tragedy is inevitable. We do too, in a way. And it’s that foreboding march to the end as Gorbach unflinchingly clarifies how inescapable tragedy is for the disenfranchised that solidifies the emotional power of “Klondike” . Klondike ends with a title card dedicating itself to all women. In another film that might seem like a cloying choice, but as a closer to the harrowing final shot of the film (the single most devastating image of the festival) it feels fraught, angry and discombobulating. It’s the kind of unwavering commitment that feels like a marked improvement over more unambitious explorations of real-world tragedies elsewhere at Sundance this year.
The final member of the quartet, “Aftershock,” is an urgent documentary from Tonya Lewis Lee and Paula Eiselt and one of the better works of nonfiction emerging from the festival this year.” In it the medical racism of the American health system comes under the microscope as the unduly high maternal mortality rate for Black women comes under focus. Two victims are the initial focus, Shamony Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac who died avoidable deaths due to the limitations of the system. What starts off as a specific look at these women, and the families they leave behind, becomes a stirring account of community, drive and the unavoidable ways that history intersects with the present.
Like many documentaries, a lot of “Aftershock” is concerned with providing information. The talking-heads include doctors making the link between slavery, the whitening of the midwifery legacy in the US, and presentday limitations on gynaecology. But “Aftershock” thrives by being firmly in control of the story its telling, the arcs of these living characters and a moving commitment to finding the beauty of community for Black people in a health system that feels built to disserve them. Late in the film Shawnee Benton-Gibson (Shamony’s mother) offers a rousing speech that feels like a linchpin for the film’s dominant themes, but there’s a quiet moment earlier on that feels just as impactful. In speaking of her daughter’s last days, she says, “I rallied people to make meals for her. I did what we had to do.” The last sentence feels illuminating. At no point does “Aftershock” feel like a performance or an idea forced into a feature-length film form. Instead, it feels like something that has to be told. Just like the widower-fathers find solace in each other, this story feels like it exists from an earnest commitment to disclosing what is too often hidden.
It’s that kind of urgency that marries these four films together, even as they take different routes to ideas of women, motherhood or pregnancy. Each of these films feels propulsive in its focus on the specific women it is offering tribute to and promises engaging collection of women-centred stories to take us through 2022.
Happening and Resurrection have secured distribution from streamers for later this year.