Even Daisy can’t solve the Crawdads mystery
Delia Owens’ eccentrically titled American novel, Where The Crawdads Sing, was only published in 2018. But in less than four years it has sold more than ten million copies, established itself as a book-club favourite and built up a huge following, particularly among women. And now there’s a film starring Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones (right) and David Strathairn from the Bourne films.
The novel’s fans will no doubt be booking seats in droves, but for Crawdad debutants like me – haven’t read the book, no idea what a crawdad is – it’s difficult to see what the fuss is about. It reminded me of The Notebook or, indeed, other adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels. But The Notebook had Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling in it and, with all due respect to the impressive Edgar-Jones, this does not.
Set in the coastal marshes of North
Carolina (the watery setting brings to mind the likes of Mud and Beasts Of The Southern Wild), the film follows the familiar structure of two converging timelines. In one, a young reclusive woman, nicknamed ‘Marsh Girl’ by nasty townsfolk, is on trial for murder following the sudden death of Chase Andrews, the local hunk she’d been secretly seeing.
In the other, we flashback to discover what made Kya (played pre-teen by Jojo Regina and then pretty nicely by Edgar-Jones) into the artistically creative but emotionally troubled woman she has become.
It’s a familiar story: extreme poverty, violent father, absent mother, acquisition of good boyfriend who finally understands her, swiftly followed by the acquisition of bad boyfriend who does not.
Crawdad fans will no doubt see things differently, and that’s fine, but this struck me as slow, shallow and improbably plotted. I also came out firmly convinced that a crawdad is a sea bird. Apparently, it’s a crayfish.
Serious lovers of British horror will definitely want to see She Will, partly because of a story that manages to link breast cancer and the burning of Scottish witches, partly for the quality of Alice
Krige’s central performance, but mainly because of its exemplary technical execution by first-time feature director Charlotte Colbert, who marshalls visual effects, music and cinematography very impressively indeed. The atmosphere she creates is superbly disturbing.
It’s probably a bit too strange and unresolved to enjoy big commercial success, but as a marker of creative intent… well, it’s a strong one. Oh, and look out for Rupert Everett, having a ball as a ‘new age’ healer who almost certainly doesn’t believe a single word of the guff he’s so enthusiastically spouting.
Notre Dame On Fire is directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, the veteran French director best known for The Name Of The Rose, and is a part-dramatised, part-documentary account of the catastrophic fire at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris in 2019.
It’s the dramatisation that’s the problem, with poor acting not helping a story that gets bogged down in the military structure of the French fire service, patience-testing repetition and protracted attempts to rescue the cathedral’s relics. Notre Dame deserves better.