For Day Three I figured I'd do another
film I missed at TIFF last year (specially since it started streaming
on Shudder just last week) Alice Lowe's Prevenge.
Spurred on by the voice of the unborn
child inside her, Ruth (Alice Lowe) goes on a grisly murder spree.
Ahh, there's nothing quite like the
sardonic and deadpan delivery of British humour. Prevenge has all
the touchstones we've come to expect with no shortage of awkward
situations. This style is like a warm blanket for me and in my eyes, Lowe is one of its premiere purveyors. I still feel that Ben
Wheatley's best film to date is Sightseers and the duo of Lowe and
Steve Oram were the main reason for that.
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| Alice Lowe as Ruth in Prevenge. |
I was actually expecting this movie to
be a little more over-the-top, so I was a little surprised to see how
restrained it was. Granted, her killings are still explosively
violent (much like Wheatley's oeuvre coincidentally), but were
presented in matter-of-fact fashion with little celebration.
Prevenge focused far more on the tragic
nature of Lowe's character, and she offered much more depth to the
piece than I anticipated. She was actually pregnant while filming
this, so I'm sure that helped with the motivation, but I think her
experience as a comedy writer served her the most. Several sections
of this piece felt like they could have been stand-alone skits
and it required real skill to weave them together as well as she did.
While it wasn't nearly as flashy as I
was expecting, I thought Prevenge was a strong effort from a unique
voice that I look forward to hearing more from.
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