My recent viewing of
Everything Everywhere All At Once (which I enjoyed on the strength of the central performances, even if the movie's constant invention wore me out by the end) got me thinking about a shift in storytelling I've noticed since the start of the pandemic. While I've largely stopped trying to keep up with new releases aside from the odd trip to the theatre, many of the ones I've managed to see strike me as having a certain self-contained, insular quality in their narratives. In some cases, like
Kimi, which is set during the pandemic and features an agoraphobic protagonist, the choices are explicit, but in other cases, like
Tenet (shot before the pandemic but released during) and its gleefully confounding logic, that kind of insularity is more implicit, almost ambient. I'm sure there are auxiliary reasons for this (budgetary restrictions, COVID protocols during shoots), but it's something that's stuck out to me.
Of course, this also meant that such qualities in older movies have been resonating with me as well, and Roberta Findlay's
Mystique is one movie that gets much of its power from a sense of psychological isolation. Like
A Woman's Torment, it takes place from a remote seaside manor (perhaps the same one, although I haven't bothered to verify) and features a protagonist retreating there for personal reasons. The heroine here, played by the great Georgina Spelvin, is photographer who is told she has a terminal illness and relocates to a house on the coast to cope. There, she meets and falls under the spell of a mysterious woman played by Samantha Fox. Spelvin is immediately infatuated, and proceeds to build their relationship through her photographic work, asking Fox to model for her and slowly becoming dependent on her affection. Yet Fox is hesitant to reciprocate (when Spelvin asks "Do you love me?", Fox responds "Does it matter?"), and quickly becomes cruel. (Fox taunts Spelvin, who finds her with another lover: "Did you ever taste semen, Alma? Mmmm, salty. Tastes better than your ****ing tea.") The relationship further deteriorates as Fox brings in more of her friends, who refuse to leave, adding to her torment. (While I'm not at all a Ron Jeremy fan for reasons onscreen and off), I will concede that he can be well cast in unsavoury roles, and is effectively used here.) But as Spelvin's psyche crumbles, one can't help but wonder, how much of this is even real?
Of the handful of movies I've seen directed by Findlay, this is easily the most polished, and has a nice fluid style that helps us slide across the layers of fluctuating reality in the film. (For the record, I don't think the lack of polish necessarily hurt her other movies.
A Woman's Torment channels the roughness into psychological instability while
Tenement's grimy aesthetic makes its bursts of violence additionally nauseating.) Like
A Woman's Torment, the coastal location gives a certain quiet atmosphere that proves a nice counterpoint to the psychodramatics of the story, and this one also comes across as more committed in its direction of the sex scenes, which are often shot with a certain shadowy intimacy. (That doesn't necessarily make them more pleasant, as there are a few pretty ugly moments of sexual assault. While these are arguably justified from a narrative standpoint, that doesn't necessarily make them easier to watch.)
Of course, the movie wouldn't work as well as it does were it not for the central performances, and both Spelvin and Fox deliver the goods. Spelvin is one of the great unsung actresses of '70s cinema, and she brings in a lived-in, vulnerable quality to her character that grounds the movie's moody coldness in real human emotion. Listen to the slight quiver in her voice and you grasp the pain her character goes through. Fox, who is usually a warm, sympathetic presence is effectively icy, and the contrast between the two makes the central dynamic work. (One also wonders where the hell any of this range was when Fox starred in Doris Wishman's
A Night to Dismember, which she apparently paid the director to do.) It also helps that they're working with a literate, intelligent screenplay courtesy of the great Roger Watkins. (Given the movie's fatalism and contempt for love, warmth and intimacy, this shouldn't be a surprise. Watkins also slides in an allusion to his pseudonym, throwing in a reference to Gustav Mahler's
Kindertodtenlieder: "Hey bitch, where's the one about the dead babies? It kinda grows on you.") And in the interest of objecting reporting, I must note that Fox not only wears the same robe as she does on the poster, but also sports a top hat later in the movie, both of which earn the movie bonus points.