With his debut feature, British writer-director J Blakeson has proven that limited means are no obstacle for inventive filmmaking. The Disappearance of Alice Creed takes place mostly in a single location, and the film features just three characters, but through his taut screenplay, slick direction and the outstanding efforts of his cast, Blakeson has crafted a first-rate thriller. The Disappearance of Alice Creed is released in the UK this week, and I met J Blakeson during last year's London Film Festival to discuss it.
Having just three characters and placing most of the action in a single location seems like a very restrictive setup for a writer. How did you negotiate the obstacles this premise involved?
I started with the restrictions before I really had a story, because I knew I wanted to write something that I would be able to direct myself, and if nobody gave me any money I could just do it on my own in my flat with people I knew. There was a bit more in the back of the van for a while, because I thought a flat and the back of a van were very findable locations, so I restricted myself to them for the main body of the script before I came up with anything else. I thought of doing a kidnapping film because it's automatically a tense story, and I wanted to do a thriller because I like those "situation to the limit" films, like Panic Room, Phone Booth or... what was that other one with Jodie Foster?...Flight Plan. There's one situation and one location, and you have to get as much out of it as you can, you have to try and out-imagine the audience and wrong-foot them at every turn.
I quite enjoyed it to be honest, because the thing with being a writer is that you can go anywhere. Look at Adaptation, that Charlie Kaufman script, where he starts at the beginning of time and goes all the way through evolution before beginning his story. You can go anywhere your imagination will take you, and sometimes the hard part is just pulling it in and keeping it simple. The film I was working on before this was The Descent 2, which was an assignment I was writing with a friend of mine, and there were restrictions in place there. Not only are they down in the cave, where everything looks the same, but they've already been there before and done it all before, so we really had to out-imagine our limitations there, and I enjoyed that because it's kind of a neat puzzle to be solved. So once I knew I was doing something that could be achieved on a low budget, the limitations didn't scare me, in fact it's quite good because within those limitations you can do as much as you want, because you have this kind of border around you.
And once you have moved past the writing stage, what are the challenges of directing a film like this?
Well, you're in the same locations again and again, and shooting the same interiors again and again can make it seem like a soap opera, when they're always in the shop, the pub or somebody's front room. I knew we had to try and make it cinematic, because three people in one set can feel very much like a stage play, and I knew I didn't want to do the shaky-cam, faux-verité style. My touchstones were more people like David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick and the Coen brothers, people who have a very deliberate style.
Did you storyboard the film before shooting?
We storyboarded some of the sequences that would be more complex to shoot because we didn't have a lot of time. It was anything with quite a lot of setups, really, just to make sure we could build the sequence in the time we had, and the scenes where it's just people talking we didn't have to storyboard because you want to give the actors as much freedom as possible. We storyboarded before we had seen any locations as well, as the preparation time on this film was really quick, so sometimes we had storyboarded something that didn't work on the location, and we had to make something up on the spot. So, the opening sequence was storyboarded, and the bit where they're eating soup, and we storyboarded some of the wood sequence as well.
Speaking of the wood sequence, was there a very deliberate Miller's Crossing reference in there?
It was, it's a heart-on-sleeve Miller's Crossing reference. I think if someone's begging for their life in some woods, you just have to throw in a Miller's Crossing reference. There are little references to other films all the way through, but most of them are very small and obscure. What happened there was, we storyboarded a version of that, but it was the same shot as when we're over their shoulders, so we just let it run for a bit and it turned into a Miller's Crossing shot. We were looking at the monitor and we thought, "Hmm...I've seen this somewhere before" [laughs].
The film has so many twists and surprises. Did you plan the whole story out first, or was it something that simply developed as you wrote the script?
I started on page one, and I didn't know where it was going to go. It was quite exciting because I've been writing assignment work where you have to go in and pitch for it, then write a beat sheet, and a first draft, but here I was writing for myself, so I didn't have to worry about that. I had a list of things that could happen – what if she needs to go to the toilet, what about making a video for the father? – and a list of scenes you sort of expect, like escape attempts, and questions about who is really in charge. So one was a list of active questions and one was a list of moments, just two hand-written A4 pages I had done very quickly that I stuck up on the wall in front of me, and that was all the prep I did, I wrote it very quickly.
When you have just three characters, the relationships and the dynamic between those characters is really what your film will stand or fall on. Did you have to put a lot of work into getting that aspect of the script right?
I really just had to do a lot of thinking, and I'd sometimes have to go away and watch other films and do other stuff before coming back to it again. So by the time I came to it, I didn't know exactly what these characters were, but I sort of knew what I wanted them to be and where I wanted them to go, although sometimes you would plan to go one way and the characters would take you somewhere else. Sometimes you'd think that's slightly more interesting than what you had imagined, so you can always take them back if this road doesn't go anywhere, but you just follow it and then you end up at the midpoint of the film...which I won't reveal.
That's the problem with this film. It will be a nightmare to review because there's so much you don't want to give away.
I know, and try cutting the trailer [laughs].
Let's talk about the casting, because all three actors are perfect for their roles. How did that come together?
We were incredibly lucky, because this came together really quickly, in less than a year. I first spoke to the company who made it around this time last year, October 2008, and it was about a month later when they said they wanted to do it. Then we hired Adrian Sturges to produce it and we set about trying to cast it in six weeks, but it was over Christmas, which takes two weeks out, so we really had around four and a half weeks to cast it. It actually made the casting process it a little bit easier, because we had a start date in February, and if people weren't available they were knocked off the list. The first person to come in and read was Gemma, who had been suggested to me by the casting director, who had cast her in St Trinian's and had followed her career. I had only seen Gemma in St Trinian's and Quantum of Solace, and they were both very different roles from this one, so I thought, she's good in what I've seen her in but this isn't the kind of thing I'd immediately think of her for. I thought she looked great and she's obviously talented, but can she bring the intensity and emotion that the part requires? She came in and read, and within about five minutes I just thought, OK, she's insanely talented, let's hire her [laughs]. She had just finished making Prince of Persia a week before, which was a massive shoot, I don't know how many weeks or tens of millions that took, and this was a four-week shoot, low-budget, on the Isle of Man. She was going to be in it all the way through and a lot of the dramatic moments fell on her, so it was a real showcase for her talent and a real test for her talent.
That opening sequence in particular must have been a real test for her. It's a difficult scene to watch, what was it like to shoot?
That was my second day as a film director. Obviously, I'd done all of the preparation, but it was my second day on set, and that was the day I was dreading the most. What I wanted to show was that when you commit a crime against somebody else, you're doing a horrible, horrible thing. Sometimes you see crimes on TV and people get over it very quickly, but when you get mugged in the street you spend weeks getting over it, you wake up with nightmares, you can't leave the house. There's no such thing as a victimless violent crime, and they're doing a horrible, terrorising thing to this girl, so I wanted to show it as that. I didn't want it to be glamorous, I certainly didn't want it to be exploitive, and I just wanted it to be very uncomfortable to watch. I also wanted to show how meticulous it was and to show that they didn't have any interest in who she was, she's just this object they're bundling around.
Obviously, Gemma read the script, and I explained that there would be nudity on certain pages, and she was fine with that. I had a long discussions with her about how we would shoot it, I showed her storyboards, and I asked her if anything was going to make her uncomfortable. On the day, we had a closed set and the crew was very sensitive, so as soon as I said cut we all left the room, the prop guys covered her up and untied her, and we just gave her some time to gather her thoughts until she told us she was ready to go again. She had the freedom to cut the camera at any time, and I just wanted to make her feel as comfortable as possible, basically, because she's a collaborator. You know, as cool as it sounds when you're growing up and you read stories about Friedkin letting off shotguns on The Exorcist, or Herzog and Kinski, I'm not like that. I really value actors and they're great actors, so they don't need me to manipulate them into giving a scared performance. I know that Gemma knows how to act scared, so I don't have to really make her scared, and I want her to feel like a collaborator with me, that she's creating with me rather than being put through the mill. Cinema is very important to me but it's just a film and that's her life, so it's not worth messing with her head when I could just shoot it a different way. It was tough, though, and I worried about it an awful lot, but on the day I think everyone else was more freaked out than she was. We were all like, "God, this is horrible," but as soon as I said cut, she'd ask "Was that alright?" and start giggling. She's such a fearless actress, and she's certainly stronger than I am.
I think my favourite performance of the three came from Eddie Marsan. He's an actor who can be ferocious but also incredibly vulnerable, and you really exploit both of those extremes with this role.
When Eddie was first suggested to me I was slightly cautious, only because he has so much humanity in his face, he brings with him so much empathy, and I didn't know if he could do that pure, hard-as-granite character. As he was written on the page he was very much a one-note hard man, but Eddie bought so much more to it. He's got that kind of small man complex, he's like a ferocious dog, and obviously he has worked with people like Mike Leigh, so he's very focused on his character. He likes to get into his character's emotions and stay there, so for the first week I was quite scared of him! [Laughs] He was very serious and focused, and if I gave him direction, I would just go up and whisper, "Do you mind just doing it like this?" and he would quietly say "OK," and I'd go off and leave him to do it. By the second or third week, because his character relaxes a bit, and because we all got to know each other a bit, we could have more of a laugh and a joke. We had a great time making the film, and it's really weird when you watch Eddie being so hardcore in a scene, and you know that he cracked up immediately afterwards.
Was it a challenge to sustain the film's tension while simultaneously making sure you didn't push things too far and go over the edge?
I've been a writer for a while now, and when I first write a script for people to read I want the tension to be there on the page. We set things up in the first reel, and from there I basically wanted it to be sequence after sequence, so by the end of each sequence we would know a little bit more about the characters, and the story would be moved forward. In editing, it was somewhat irritating when we were running over length because we couldn't just take a sequence out; you need the gunshot to get the bullet in the wall, you need the bullet to get to the toilet, and so on. We just had to keep tightening it, so hopefully it feels relentless in a good way. I likened it to a balloon dropping, and we have to almost let it hit the floor before we tap it up in the air again, so the editor and I worked really hard on maintaining the pace and keeping things moving. Of course, when you're in a flat all you can do is talk to each other, and I didn't want that, I wanted stuff to happen. I had a rule that if I was going to use something I would make the most it – so if I have a gun I'll use it a lot, if I have a set of keys I'll use it a lot, if I have a bullet I'll use it a lot – and it will hopefully mean something different every time.
You have been writing for a couple of years now and working in short films. Was directing features always your goal?
Since I was 19, when I made my first actual film, the goal was to make features. I moved to London to become an internationally successful film director when I was 21, but I had no money, was unemployed and didn't know anybody, so I started writing. I thought it was better to have some work than to have no work, and maybe if I keep writing then they'll let me direct one, and eventually it worked, ten years later [laughs]. In a way, I'm glad it took that long, although I was attached to make a film three or four years ago and I got very close to making it, but it didn't happen.
Is that a project you could resurrect now?
I think scripts I wrote that didn't get made are a bit like ex-girlfriends; I was obsessed with them at the time, and I still have real affection for them, but it would probably be a mistake to go back. People still own them, so who knows? If my currency gets higher then perhaps somebody will try to resurrect them, but I won't be going back to direct them. That was me then and I think I'm a much better writer now, and I've become much more focused on the type of films I want to make. It's the old cliché that in your 20's you're kind of looking for yourself, and by the time you're 30 you know who you are, and that's where I am right now. You've got to learn a lot from every script you write, and I've written some really bad scripts, but in every bad script I've written I have learned something, and hopefully I haven't written many bad scripts in the past five years. I wrote my first script when I was 17, and it was awful, and when I read it now it's horribly embarrassing, but the next one was a little bit better and so was the one after that.
So what are you up to next?
Right now I'm writing a script which I owe to somebody because they gave me time off to make my film, so I'm doing a re-write on that, and I'm also working on the next script I'm going to direct. At the same time I'm reading other people's scripts, because I'm signing with a US agent, I haven't decided which one yet, and they send a lot of scripts. So we'll see what happens, because I want to direct a lot, and if I just direct my own scripts then I can only make something every two years, and that's if it goes well. I really admire people like Soderbergh, you know, he makes so many films and has his stamp all over them. I haven't read anything that has blown me away yet, but if a script comes along that's really amazing then why not?
Well, I'm looking forward to the next J Blakeson film, whatever it might be.
So am I! [Laughs]
In the opening moments of his feature debut The Disappearance of Alice Creed, J Blakeson directs with a brutal efficiency. Two men (played by Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston) are hard at work in a sparsely decorated flat – soundproofing the walls, securing the doors, preparing the bed – and they wordlessly go about their business with a methodical and exacting sense of purpose. Their ultimate goal quickly becomes clear, when the pair sit patiently in a van and wait for a young woman (Gemma Arterton) to innocently walk into view. They grab her, tie her up, gag her and mask her. She is driven back to the flat where the two kidnappers coldly ignore her terrified screams as they tie her to the bed and leave the room, locking her inside. This is Alice Creed, and her ordeal has just begun.
Watching a young woman being stripped, bound and terrorised seems to set The Disappearance of Alice Creed up as a nasty exploitation film. This sequence is arresting and expertly assembled, but it's also troubling and horrible to watch, as the two men coldly ignore the terrified screams of their vulnerable prisoner, and bundle her about in such a rough fashion. Fortunately, Blakeson's film is better than that, and it quickly develops into a taut thriller, with the resourceful Alice proving to be far from a helpless victim. The daughter of a millionaire, she seems like the perfect prey for the ransom plot hatched by these ex-cons, but Blakeson loves to turn the tables and pull the rug out from under the viewer, and his clever screenplay continually manages to surprise. To say much more about the plot would be an error, as The Disappearance of Alice Creed is full of twists – including two that completely alter our perception of the characters and their relationship – and the less one knows about the film before viewing the better.
Instead, let's just admire the things that Blakeson does so well with his first film. The vast majority of The Disappearance of Alice Creed takes place within the cramped confines of the flat, and only three characters appear onscreen, but Blakeson uses these conditions to create a tense atmosphere. His direction is supremely confident, opting for carefully composed camerawork that brings a cinematic flair to his limited surroundings. The film is superbly cut together as well, with Blakeson and his editor Mark Eckersley developing a rapid, gripping pace and drawing maximum impact from the various set-pieces the director has built his screenplay around. It's a fine balancing act, to string a sequence out until the audience is on the edge of its seat, without pushing things too far, and this film manages to strike that difficult balance almost perfectly. The Disappearance of Alice Creed is a near-textbook example of how to construct a good thriller.
Blakeson also does fine work with his actors. With just three performers on show for the film's entire running time, the strength of the cast is naturally of paramount importance, and all three actors respond with exceptional displays. The relationship between kidnappers Vic and Danny is brilliantly portrayed by Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston, with cold hard man Vic domineering and bullying his young partner, until their characterisations and motives are upended by Blakeson halfway through. Marsan is an endlessly watchable actor and he is superb here once again, but the revelation of The Disappearance of Alice Creed is Alice herself, Gemma Arterton. A far cry from the world of James Bond or the Hollywood blockbusters she suddenly appears to be the go-to girl for, this role gives her the chance to really stretch her acting muscles, and she doesn't waste the opportunity. Playing Alice Creed allows her to be simultaneously vulnerable and a bold, courageous protagonist, and she brings a remarkable conviction and emotional weight to her acting.
The Disappearance of Alice Creed is not flawless, and Blakeson occasionally ties himself in knots with his complicated plotting, which often leads to Alice, Vic and especially Danny behaving in a manner that forwards the plot rather than one that naturally fits their characterisations. The film frequently stretches credulity as well, but Blakeson's fleet direction and lively pacing ensures such flaws don't really register. Even if we might be able to anticipate what lies in store for each of the characters in the end, it's still fascinating to see how many twists and turns the narrative manages to wind through before we get there. I can't recall the last time I was so gripped and thoroughly entertained by a British thriller, and it certainly marks its debutant writer/director as a talent to watch.
Read my interview with J Blakeson here
Every year, millions of people descend on the tiny French town of Lourdes praying for a miracle. Ever since the Virgin Mary apparently appeared there in front of Bernadette Soubirous, this location has become a place of hope for people suffering from debilitating illnesses and disabilities. They travel there on pilgrimage, clutching to the belief that praying at the shrine or washing in the sacred Lourdes water can result in miraculous cures, and most of them, needless to say, return home disappointed. Still they make the journey, led by blind and unyielding faith in God's benevolence, and every few years, a miracle is reported. Jessica Hausner's Lourdes follows a pilgrimage during which such an unlikely event does occur, and her film is one of the most remarkable studies of faith cinema has produced for many years.
What makes Lourdes so strangely riveting is the director's tone. She takes an observational approach, watching her subjects as they experience every odd aspect of the Lourdes experience. Her chief subject is Christine (Sylvie Testud), a young woman confined to a wheelchair by Multiple Sclerosis, who is paralysed from the neck down and completely dependent on the care of others. Despite her disability, Christine maintains a perky, optimistic outlook, enjoying herself on a rare excursion, and not giving a lot of credence to the notion that she may experience a miraculous recovery. "I'd rather go to Rome," she tells one nurse, "I prefer the cultural trips". Hausner's careful framing follows Christine's group as they are shuttled from one round of treatments to the next, via church services, photo opportunities and meals, all under the watchful eye of the stern Cécile (Elina Löwensohn).
Hausner is afforded plenty of opportunities to mock Lourdes, and others filmmakers would have undoubtedly found snarky humour in the crass commercialism of the place, or the often-forced sense of gaiety exhibited by the nurses, who provide an award at the end of the trip to the "Best Pilgrim." In one scene, we find a group members of the Order of Malta telling a joke about God and The Virgin Mary making holiday plans, and Mary says Lourdes is a great idea because she's "never been there before"; but Hausner simply takes this all in her stride and approaches it with the same objectivity, refusing to pass judgement on what she sees, allowing the audience to develop our own take on it. Her patient, ambiguous style even extends to the depiction of the miraculous event that does occur halfway through her narrative. As she is being wheeled through a grotto, Christine reaches out and brushes the wall with her hand. She withdraws the hand so quickly nobody even notices – even the viewer might wonder if we saw what we think we saw – and she is wheeled out of the frame with an inscrutable look on her face.
Given her situation, the actress playing Christine needs to do a great deal of performing with her face alone, so it is fortunate that Sylvie Testud is such an expressive figure. This is a masterpiece of contained, minimal acting. Testud's visage draws the eye effortlessly; she looks so fragile, but her face reveals her curiosity, thoughtfulness and wit. Her brief flirtation with a handsome male volunteer is portrayed in a touching and sweet fashion, and she plays her tentative reaction to her miraculous recovery beautifully. Her small, hesitant movements reveal Christine's nervousness at the unimaginable new life that has now opened up before her, one that is both exciting and fearful. All she has ever wanted is a "normal" life.
It is the reaction to Christine's transformation that most interests Hausner. As some of the pilgrims fawn over the miraculous figure in their midst, others snipe with petty comments that betray their jealousy – why is she the chosen one? Why not me? Hausner doesn't even give us the satisfaction of confirming the veracity of her protagonist's cure. She has to subject herself to testing by the an official medical committee, and in the stunning climactic sequence, she leaves Christine's fate hanging up in the air, inviting us to speculate on this enigmatic young woman's future. Lourdes is a beguiling and tantalising film, and Hausner's cool and wry filmmaking style proves to be the perfect approach to draw out the compelling mysteries at the heart of this tricky subject matter. Few films tackle issues of faith today and fewer still do so with genuine inquisitiveness. Lourdes deserves to be seen for that reason, and also for a central performance that is some kind of small miracle in itself.
It started last summer as a challenge made in jest, and yesterday it became a reality. I can still remember the conversation at work last year that led to this madness, when a discussion of the London Marathon led to sarcastic comments of the "I'd love to see Phil doing it" variety. In a fit of pique, I decided to prove them wrong by signing up for the 2010 run, despite my rather unimpressive physical condition. I haven't engaged in any kind of regular exercise since I played football as a teenager – and even then I was a goalkeeper – so I had some serious work to do in order to get myself in shape for this. Last August, I bought some running gear and trainers and set out on my first run. I returned half an hour later, completely knackered and out of breath, and having failed to master a 2-mile jog. This truly was going to be a long, long road.
Gradually, however, I began to find my feet. The runs slowly got longer as the weather conditions got worse, and when I completed an 8-mile run in October I felt for the first time that I might be on track to accomplish my goal. It was hard to maintain the motivation and dedication required to keep my training up as the harsh winter weather set in, the snow and ice meant January was almost a complete write-off, and the half marathon I completed in Brighton in February was the absolute nadir of my whole experience, with atrocious conditions from start to finish. At least, I thought, this is as bad as it can possibly get.
Ultimately, that proved to be the case, and the rest of my training went relatively smoothly. I have suffered some minor injury worries along the way, mostly with my hip and my calves, which have provided constant niggles, but some careful stretching has helped me minimise those issues. When the day itself finally arrived, I was feeling oddly sanguine about the prospect of running 26.2 miles. The weather predictions were totally wide of the mark, and the anticipated scorching heat didn't materialise as the race started in chilly, wet conditions, but having trained in such weather for months, that probably suited me better. I breezed through the first half of the marathon with relative ease, maintaining a steady pace throughout and feeling pretty good about it all. The second half of the race, however, was much more of a challenge.
Miles 15 to 20 took us around the Isle of Dogs/Canary Wharf area, and that's where I first started to feel the heat – literally, in fact, as this was where the sun finally started to break through the clouds. I was holding up a lot better than some competitors, though; it's an unsettling sight when you run past people lying on the ground in agony, or being carted off on a stretcher and wearing an oxygen mask. To be honest, the marathon is as much a mental challenge as a physical one, and when my fatigued legs started telling me that they wanted to quit it took every ounce of my determination to force myself onwards. All the while, I was terrified of one thing – The Wall. Runners talk of "hitting the wall" in the same hushed, haunted tones as a war veteran recalling terrible events, and now I know what they mean. I ran straight into that wall at the 22-mile mark, and I honestly feared that I would have to throw in the towel. I simply had nothing left to give, and I could see people dropping out around me, but I had promised myself that I would keep going unless I completely keeled over. I couldn't let my charity down; I couldn't let my friends and family down; I couldn't let myself down.
The other thing that carried me onwards was the magnificent support of the spectators who lined the entire route. Their cheers and shouts of encouragement gave the runners a huge lift just when they needed it most, and when I got into the last two miles, I somehow found a second wind. The last 400 metres was like nothing I've ever experienced, when I could see the finish in front of me and was being spurred on by the crowd. I looked at the clock and realised I was so close to beating my 5-hour target, which gave me the motivation to really push myself in that final stretch, crossing the line in 04:53:42.
Throughout the past few months, people having been telling me that this won't be my last marathon, and that I would inevitably get hooked on running. Alas, it hasn't happened, and I have never really enjoyed the whole process as much as others seem to. Every training run has felt like a chore, and now it's all over I'm just looking forward to getting my life back. Having said that, it was ultimately worth it for yesterday's experience. Running the London Marathon might have been the toughest thing I've ever done, but feeling of finishing it was incredible – I don't think I can sufficiently describe the overwhelming sense of relief, elation and pride that I felt stepping over that line. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life, and one I'll never forget. I'm now rather sore – well, to be more accurate, everything hurts – but I'm comforted by the knowledge that while the pain will eventually go away, the memories and sense of achievement will last a lot longer.
Making a sprightly directorial debut that reflects the bubbly persona she has displayed on screen for nearly three decades, Drew Barrymore's Whip It has an infectious sense of fun. Adapted by Shauna Cross from her own novel, the film is a portrait of female independence and self-realisation, with teenager Bliss (Ellen Page) rejecting the pageant lifestyle so beloved by her mother (Marcia Gay Harden), and embracing the rough-and-tumble world of the roller-derby. Here she finds an exhilaration and camaraderie with her teammates that eclipses anything her humdrum life can offer, and without her parents' knowledge, Bliss becomes one of the league's biggest stars. The drama that subsequently occurs is entirely predictable – Bliss falls in and out of love, rows with her parents, and has her dream threatened just as her team's final game approaches – but Whip It proves that the manner of a story's telling can compensate for any amount of clichéd plot elements.
Whip It largely succeeds because Barrymore knows exactly where her strengths lie as a filmmaker, and she exploits them effectively. Although she occasionally overreaches (an awkward underwater love scene, for example) her handling of the material is usually confident and appealingly vibrant. The roller-derby scenes are directed with an energetic rush, and I was often caught up in the action even though I'm not sure I ever fully understood the rules of this rather hectic and baffling sport (the tutorial sequence Barrymore includes didn't really help). Generally, however, Barrymore is smart enough to trust her cast. She has filled the film with good actors and she lets them provide the story with its motor. The ubiquitous Kristen Wiig shines as one of Bliss' teammates, while Alia Shawkat enjoys some fine moments as her best friend and Juliette Lewis is much less annoying than usual as the closest thing this benign film has to a villain.
But for the more emotional sequences, Barrymore leans heavily on two performances in particular. As the mother who initially comes off as something of a caricature, Marcia Gay Harden gives an outstanding performance, full of nuances and textures that only become visible over the course of the movie, and she shares some extremely touching scenes with Ellen Page, creating a mother-daughter relationship that feels complicated and real. For her part, Page delivers another fine display; she's capable of portraying both the guts and vulnerability that go into her well-drawn character, and it's easy to cheer for her as she makes the right choices about her future towards the end of the picture. We also cheer for her because Bliss is an all-too-rare figure in contemporary cinema. She is a female character who follows a specific path not because of a man, or because it's the accepted thing to do, but because she is good at it and it makes her feel great. In a couple of months, Sex and the City 2 will be released in cinemas, and I wonder how many of the millions of women who flock to that picture will care that they are watching characters who seem to be defined solely by their clothes and their relationships? The lack of decent female representation in cinema is a regular lament, so when films like Whip It come along, please make an effort to seek them out.
