A folk horror-tinged debut to watch 👀
Outside the Depp v. Heard trial in the US last month, Depp fans carried signs bearing the slogan “Burn the Witch”. The case, widely reported as a hammer blow for the #MeToo movement, follows years of claims by film-industry figures – Woody Allen, Terry Gilliam, Michael Haneke – that the movement’s chief legacy has been to foster a ‘witch-hunt’ atmosphere against men.
Amid the misogynist cut-and-thrust of contemporary politics, the witch has become a contested figure in the culture wars. Here to reclaim her for the side of the abused is Charlotte Colbert, French-British director of. In her folk horror-tinged debut, ageing film star Veronica, played by South African actress Alice Krige, reawakens old traumas on a spiritual retreat in the Scottish Highlands.
There’s a lot wrong with this film, not all of it accounted for by the meagre budget. The script is patchy, the tone is uneven, the supporting turns are hammy in the extreme . But there is a dreamlike power in Colbert’s brooding, near-black-and-white landscape photography, which flirts with pure abstraction and is only occasionally undercut by the schlocky dream montages.
At which point, the “she will” of the title comes into play, as Veronica feels the first stirrings of a power that seems to flow naturally from these newfound feelings of solidarity. How will she use her power? Perhaps the truer reading of the title would be as ‘she-will’ – a reassertion of female agency in the face of victim narratives like #MeToo and the early-modern witch trials.
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