Friday 11 November 2022 01:53 AM Is story of fascinating girls trickery or divine miracle? BRIAN VINER reviews ... trends now
The Wonder (15, 108mins)
Verdict: Compelling period drama
Rating: ****
The 2017 film Disobedience received oodles of critical acclaim without ever quite getting the audiences it deserved. It was about a woman, played by Rachel Weisz, ostracised by the strictly orthodox Jewish community in which she’d grown up in London after falling romantically for another woman.
Disobedience was an auspicious English-language debut by talented Chilean director Sebastian Leilo, and in The Wonder, his third film in English (the second was another corker, Gloria Bell, with Julianne Moore), Leilo tackles some of the same subjects: religious intensity, a woman’s refusal to conform, and a tight-knit community feeling threatened. But the backdrop here is very different.
The setting is rural Ireland in 1862, where the locals are flustered by a nine-year-old girl, Anna O’Donnell (newcomer Kila Lord Cassidy, acting her little socks off), who does not appear to have eaten anything for four months yet is still alive.
(L-R) Kila Lord Cassidy as Anna O'Donnell, Tom Burke as Will Byrne and Florence Pugh as Lib Wright in a scene from The Wonder
So the village elders, including the doctor (Toby Jones) and the priest (Ciaran Hinds), engage an English nurse, Lib Wright (Florence Pugh, superb), to watch over Anna. Her brief, shared with a nun, is to find out whether there’s trickery involved, with Anna’s mother Rosaleen (Elaine Cassidy, young Kila’s real-life mum) perhaps complicit, or whether some kind of divine miracle is playing out before their eyes. An intrigued journalist (Tom Burke) is also sniffing around.
The screenplay is by Alice Birch, whose impressive screen credits include the splendid films Lady Macbeth (2016) and Mothering Sunday (2021), and Normal People on TV, and Emma Donoghue, from whose novel of the same name The Wonder is adapted.
The book in turn was inspired by the true story of the so-called ‘Fasting Girls’, girls and young women who claimed heavenly guidance as they refused to eat.
The book in turn was inspired by the true story of the so-called ‘Fasting Girls’, girls and young women who claimed heavenly guidance as they refused to eat. Pictured: Tom Burke as Will Byrne
According to one academic, we would now know them as anorexics. At the time, some thought they should become saints.
Whatever, Leilo has crafted another compelling film, which starts by revealing all the paraphernalia of a modern-day shoot, before the camera takes us into the 19th Century.
He is magnificently supported by cinematographer Ari Wegner (Lady Macbeth, The Power Of The Dog), who has made The Wonder exquisite on the eye. The lighting and composition is such that practically every frame could be hung in the National Gallery. I’m loath to use a word so at odds with the subject matter, but it is truly a visual feast.
The Wonder is in selected cinemas, and streams on Netflix from Wednesday.
For more reviews, see mailonline.co.uk
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (12A, 161mins)
Verdict: Nowt to marvel at
Rating: ***
The 2018 superhero film Black Panther became a $1.3 billion box-office behemoth, thumping even most other Marvel movies into the middle-distance. So despite the terribly sad death in August 2020 of actor Chadwick Boseman, who played the title character first time round, a sequel was as inevitable as the African sunrise.
Nonetheless, writer-director Ryan Coogler had to tear up his script and start again following the untimely demise, at the age of just 43, of his leading man.
The result is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and for cynics the key word in that title is ‘forever’.
Directors of superhero movies are inclined to confuse themselves with the likes of David Lean, who made sweeping historical epics the length of short holidays. Coogler is no exception.
Chelsea and England footballer Mason Mount was sitting just in front of me at last week’s London premiere, and grew conspicuously restless as the film moved towards a third period of extra-time, writes Brian Viner. Pictured: Angela Bassett as Wakanda's Queen Ramonda
Chelsea and England footballer Mason Mount was sitting just in front of me at last week’s London premiere, and grew conspicuously restless as the film moved towards a third period of extra-time. If only we could have decided the plot on penalties.
Still, for the less cynical, the key words are again ‘Black Panther’. That exciting character, superhero alter ego of T’Challa, ruler of the rich and secretive African country of Wakanda, was to have loomed large in the new film. Instead of re-casting him, Coogler has killed him off.
He insists this is his tribute to Boseman but it makes narrative sense too, and also sets up a funeral sequence that is almost as spectacular as the coronation in the first film.
