Worth: $16.00
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Cast:
Rebecca Hall, Tim Roth, Grace Kaufman, Michael Esper, Angela Wong Carbone
Intro:
… stark, queasy, and horrifying …
Wherever audiences think writer/director Andrew Semans’ psychological thriller Resurrection is going, they will not be prepared for where it ends up. Resurrection begins as a film grounded in some sense of reality but gradually and effectively swerves into gonzo territory that aptly echoes the theme of untreated trauma.
Margaret Ballion (Rebecca Hall) is a successful executive in a biotech firm, she lives with her seventeen-year-old daughter Abbie (Grace Kaufman) in a beautifully appointed city apartment. When Abbie is away overnight staying with a friend, Margaret carries on an affair with her married co-worker Peter (Michael Esper). Margaret’s life has a controlled regularity; she jogs daily, she frets over her soon to be college bound daughter, and she takes precisely no shit from anyone.
Margaret’s life could be seen as a little too tightly wound. Routine seems to keep her grounded, and control over herself is essential. In a conversation with her intern Gwyn (Angela Wong Carbone) she advises the young woman to dump her “sadistic” boyfriend. Gwyn’s boyfriend is discussed as controlling and demeaning, but the term sadist seems a stretch – that is until we learn that Margaret knows exactly what sadism involves.
At a biotech conference, Margaret spots a man in attendance. All the natural confidence she exuded at the start of the film is stripped away immediately, as she begins to sweat profusely and runs out of the building. Abbie asks her what’s wrong, but Margaret covers with a lie. Margaret sees the man again; this time the audience gets a sense of who he is. He is called David (Tim Roth) and the two once had a relationship that started when she was a teen over twenty-years prior. David initially pretends not to know her but then opens up that not only is he the David of her past, but that he has come back to be with her, to be a family with their son Ben (the less said about Ben the better) and her “replacement child” Abbie who he not so subtly threatens.
Margaret’s life begins to spiral out of control. She stops attending work, bans Abbie from leaving the house, and refuses all suggestions that she’s going through some kind of episode. Semans deliberately leaves it open to the audience whether Margaret is any kind of reliable narrator; in fact, the notion of reliability is almost out of the question especially when she relates to a horrified Gwyn in an astounding eight-minute-long monologue about what happened between David and herself. Margaret is a victim of coercive control, sadistic torture that began when the charismatic older man suggested “kindnesses” she could show him which started with cooking, cleaning, giving up her love of drawing, and then escalated to holding stress positions for hours and ended in an unspeakably horrific manner.
As Margaret faces down David, she is drawn further into his web. To protect Abbie, she begins to enact new “kindnesses” that David concocts to prove that she will always belong to him. While this is going on, she completely alienates Abbie. Alone and floundering, Margaret’s only redemption is to annihilate her abuser.
Those expecting a traditional revenge narrative will be quickly disabused that this is what the film is offering. Instead, it is a stark, queasy, and horrifying piece of cinema that loops back in on itself until the audience is unsure what was real, if any of it was at all.
Semans and cinematographer Wyatt Garfield present a city that is almost without colour. Margaret’s clothes are shades of grey, her apartment is neutral tones, the only real colour is in Abbie’s beloved salmon hoodie and eventually in the penultimate scene (the striking use of colour adds an even more visceral aspect to a scene that is indescribable).
What is most impressive about the film is the core performances by Hall and Roth. Hall is an incredibly strong performer and Resurrection pushes her to embody a woman who fights for her autonomy but very quickly loses it. The question of whether Margaret is insane is redundant – and Hall allows the audience to feel her defiance and hopelessness without ever making the character a hysterical cliché. Roth is positively chilling as David, a man who knows Margaret so well – “I’m the only one who sees you,” he says – that he is able to undo her without ever raising his voice. Roth has played his share of creeps before, just as Hall has played her share of fractured characters; yet each is giving a level of subtlety in a film that is often devoid of it.
A lack of subtlety is where Resurrection begins to falter. Although it takes unexpected paths, the film isn’t understated in any manner. The cat and mouse game between David and Margaret plays out for a little too long, and despite the truly outlandish ending that shocks on multiple levels, there is a foregone desolation to the film that may alienate more than engage.
The film cannot be recommended to the faint-hearted; it is remorselessly dark and watching Margaret break down in real time is arduous to watch considering the events that got her to that place.
Resurrection is a fascinating film and one that isn’t easily erased. Semans pushes the envelope and makes a thriller that moves beyond the perfunctory into a new territory – whether you’re willing to enter that territory will be up to your individual fortitude.
