The prequel to one of my favourite films from last year in X, Pearl serves as the origin story for that film’s surprisingly sympathetic villain of the same name. After how much X wound up impressing me, both as a straight-forward genre experience and as a multi-faceted treatise on the nature of horror, pornography, and cinema in general, I went into this excited but not necessarily knowing what I was getting myself into. And truth be told, I wound up enjoying this even more than X… but not for the reasons I was expecting.
Where X was all-encompassing in how it treated cinema as an art form, along with many of its genre categories, this is more emphatically a character study of young Pearl (Mia Goth). In keeping with Ti West’s prior retro inspirations, there’s quite a bit of The Wizard Of Oz to be found in Pearl’s life working on her family’s farm, wanting to find escape from her humdrum existence, as well as an… interesting scene involving a scarecrow. Can’t say I was expecting a film this mainstream to take notes from 1988’s Pin, but there you go.
Only, rather than directly being analogous to Wizard Of Oz, this feels closer to how that film has influenced psychological cinema in the decades since, particularly with filmmakers like David Lynch. Where Dorothy’s pining for somewhere over the rainbow came from a lack of faith in her own strength as a person, Pearl’s similar desires come from a much darker place. The sexual repression shown in X is revealed to be only part of the puzzle here, as it seems like every aspect of her life has been meticulously set up just to keep her isolated and divorce her from her agency as a person, driving her mad as a result.
The film is set in 1918, both in the midst of the Spanish flu outbreak (influenced by this film’s own production in the midst of a pandemic, complete with masks) and at the tail-end of World War I, which Pearl’s husband Howard (Alistair Sewell) is overseas fighting in, and the surrounding war-time nationalism being a source of great worry for Pearl’s German immigrant parents, her mother Ruth (Tandi Wright) especially. On top of that, her father (Matthew Sunderland) has been left crippled by the flu, with both Pearl and Ruth needing to take care of him along with the rest of the farm. All this at the expense of what Pearl wants to do with her own life, to the extent that even showing interest in things beyond the confines of the farm leads to rather ghoulish behaviour from Ruth. Not that she is really the villain here as, much like with Pearl in X, Ruth is also given a sympathetic side that adds to the copious amounts of melancholy permeating the frame; it’s just that this is clearly a ‘like mother, like daughter’ situation.
When these exterior factors are put together, and pushed towards someone who seems to be dealing with psychological issues as it is in Pearl, what results manages to push beyond the tragedy of her character in X, and brings into even more harrowing territory. Mia Goth absolutely slays with her performance here, and I’m not just talking about the literal murders that take place. At every turn, whether she’s wistfully daydreaming about life as a star, gently smiling at the chance to connect with someone like the incredibly swoon-worthy Projectionist (David Corenswet), or valiantly struggling to keep the emotional rot on the inside and ultimately failing, she gives it her all.
This all culminates in a long (and I do mean long) monologue from Pearl, which accomplishes quite a few things simultaneously. Firstly, it being presented in a single, unbroken take gives Goth ample room to flex her acting ability, on top of how heartbreaking the monologue is all on its own. Secondly, it lays out every single internal and external factor that has led to her actions throughout the film, both seen and unseen, to create a devastating plea for escape that flattened me like a steamroller.
And thirdly, considering Mia Goth’s past performances in films to do with predatory sexual dynamics (Nymphomaniac, A Cure For Wellness, High Life), power struggles within social and societal hierarchies (Suspiria, Emma.), not to mention her previous depiction of escaping a tragic family existence in The House, it also takes on the tone of something career-defining. It’s as if Goth is speaking on behalf of every one of those characters who had their personhood ripped from them, and giving all those ghosts a chance to be heard.
I should also mention that that whole thing? Not even the best part of the film. That comes with the film’s ending credits, which I would easily rank as among the most unsettling and heart-wrenching closing images for any film, past and present.
This film serves well enough as a prequel to X, with a scene involving a screening of A Free Ride, one of the earliest American stag films, basically being a prologue to the sexual liberation themes of X. But for as much as it strengthens that film’s own thematic ambitions, and makes the prospect of the upcoming MaXXXine very enticing, this has an intensity and potency all its own. Taking inspiration from pre-Code melodramas, its depiction of Pearl makes for not only one of the strongest character portraits I’ve ever covered on here, but a lead performance that elevates Mia Goth in my eyes from just being someone I’ve noticed in other films, into a true-blue talent. That she helped co-write this only strengthens that impression for me.
X was already a very good film, but this hit me so much harder that, honestly, I’m even more annoyed that this didn’t come out here in 2022 like it did in the U.S., as this easily would’ve secured a place on the best films of that year. As it is, though… well, let’s just say that I’m quite certain that we will be talking about this film again.
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