IS STORY OF FASTING GIRLS TRICKERY OR DIVINE MIRACLE?
The Wonder (15, 108 mins)
Verdict: Compelling period drama ★★★★☆
THE 2017 film Disobedience received oodles of critical acclaim without ever quite getting the audiences it deserved. It was about a woman, played by Rachel Weisz, ostracised by the strictly orthodox Jewish community in which she’d grown up in London after falling romantically for another woman.
Disobedience was an auspicious Englishlanguage debut by talented Chilean director Sebastian Leilo, and in The Wonder, his third film in English (the second was another corker, Gloria Bell, with Julianne Moore), Leilo tackles some of the same subjects: religious intensity, a woman’s refusal to conform, and a tight-knit community feeling threatened. But the backdrop here
is very different. The setting is rural Ireland in 1862, where the locals are flustered by a nine- year- old girl, Anna O’Donnell (newcomer Kila Lord Cassidy, acting her little socks off), who does not appear to have eaten anything for four months yet is still alive.
So the village elders, including the doctor (Toby Jones) and the priest (Ciaran Hinds), engage an English nurse, Lib Wright (Florence Pugh, superb), to watch over Anna. Her brief, shared with a nun, is to find out whether there’s trickery involved, with Anna’s mother Rosaleen (Elaine Cassidy, young Kila’s reallife mum) perhaps complicit, or whether some kind of divine miracle is playing out before their eyes. An intrigued journalist (Tom Burke) is also sniffing around.
The screenplay is by Alice Birch, whose impressive screen credits include the splendid films Lady Macbeth (2016) and Mothering Sunday (2021), and Normal People on TV, and Emma Donoghue, from whose novel of the same name The Wonder is adapted.
The book in turn was inspired by the true story of the so-called ‘Fasting Girls’, girls and young women who claimed heavenly guidance as they refused to eat.
According to one academic, we would now know them as anorexics. At the time, some thought they should become saints.
Whatever, Leilo has crafted another compelling film, which starts by revealing all the paraphernalia of a modern-day shoot, before the camera takes us into the 19th Century.
He is magnificently supported by cinematographer Ari Wegner (Lady Macbeth, The Power Of The Dog), who has made The Wonder exquisite on the eye. The lighting and composition is such that practically every frame could be hung in the National Gallery. I’m loath to use a word so at odds with the subject matter, but it is truly a visual feast.
■ The Wonder is in selected cinemas, and streams on Netflix from Wednesday. For more reviews, see mailonline.co.uk