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| Kirsten Dunst stars as the enigmatic Theresa in Kate and Laura Mulleavy's Woodshock (2017) |
"What have you done, Theresa? What have you done?" These ominous words end one of the most beautiful and intriguing
trailers I've seen in recent years, for fashion designers' Kate and Laura Mulleavy's debut film
Woodshock (2017). After I saw this trailer, I wanted to see this film in all its experimental, superimpositioned glory with such a desperate longing; yet alas, nothing that wondrously weird and non-mainstream was going to play in a theater anywhere near me. Then Amazon came to my rescue (as it so often does), streaming it for the pretty pennies of my Prime membership, and giving the film a larger viewership than it might never receive otherwise. Still, I'm ambivalent about Theresa, this particular "haunted heroine," as the film's ambiguities coupled with its distinctive visual style are indeed gorgeously compelling, but perhaps even too oblique for me--a critic who wholeheartedly embraces style and narrative complexity over clarity and substance. Nevertheless, I'm still working over this film, turning it over in my mind, days after viewing it.
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| Theresa must repeatedly face herself, wracked by guilt and grief, in Woodshock |
Woodshock follows a grief-stricken Theresa, as she copes with the aftermath of assisting her mother's suicide after a bout with what appears to be an extremely drawn out and painful illness. (I'm not really spoiling anything here--this plot point is revealed in the trailer and in the film's first 5 minutes). Gradually, she attempts to get "back to life," and returns to her job at a marijuana dispensary, where she works with the rather unstable Keith (Pilou Asbaek), and doles out dosages to medical marijuana recipients Johnny (Jack Kilmer) and Ed (Steph DuVall). She also gets her steady beau, woodcutter Nick (Joe Cole), to move in with her, but is apparently haunted by her mother's passing and her role in it, as her relationship with her mother's room and bed suggests. An accident with some dosed marijuana sends Theresa over the edge, and she spirals into a strange world, a somnambulist stumbling around in her life. As the film evolves, her guilt and grief seem to propel her toward taking her own life, as she starts to make a series of poor decisions that place her in a mental state distinctly at odds with reality. Theresa is an excellent unreliable narrator, and the film's horror aspects evolve into a harrowing journey where one tries to discern what actually has happened (as in filmic events), and what's unfolding inside her head--the classic "haunted heroine of horror" paradox.
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| Shades of Lars Von Trier's Melancholia (2011) |
The Mulleavy siblings are mostly known for their fantastic and ethereal designs for fashion house Rodarte, and their visual aesthetic is on hand throughout this mysterious meditation on grief. I'm still on the fence regarding the symbolic importance of the film's title, or it's gloriously wooded setting, where majestic redwoods seem otherworldly and almost CGI in their ridiculous majesty as they dwarf Theresa when she wanders amongst them in her Rodarte negligee. The sisters reveal Theresa's inner unraveling through a series of layered superimpositions and shots that move hesitantly through her home, emphasizing the fraught relationship she has to her personal space--even though she seems to sleep/dream walk through every other setting as well.
Woodshock comes across as very heavy-hearted, and when it moves into nightmare territory, the shift is jarring but unsurprising, as Theresa's mental state is always ephemeral and uncertain (and that's not just from the pot she's smoking).
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| Theresa's relationship to her surroundings is sometimes as one, and sometimes at odds |
Unlike,
Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronfsky, 2000),
Woodshock's increasingly unsettling visuals do not add up to the ultimate "Just Say No" film, and I felt throughout the film an empathy toward Theresa's suffering and confusion. When things get bloody, they look pretty gorgeous, but the film's almost non-existent narrative structure at times veers away to other characters and other locations, unnecessarily troubling our identification with Theresa's experiences in order to give viewers
some context. Yet all that context gets tossed aside at film's end, and we are left with not really knowing what the hell actually
happened in the film. "What have you done, Theresa?" seems like a pretty appropriate question, and I'm still not sure. While I'm a big fan of ambiguity, I was even left with a "huh" after all was said and done. I still recommend the film, especially if you are an Amazon Prime customer; why not take the film for a spin? This moody piece is pretty and pretty damn weird, made by two incredibly talented women directors. The film doesn't neatly fit into the horror genre, but definitely plays enough with its tropes to satisfy those viewers who like their films to take them to dark and gorgeous places.
