The Nightingale (2018, Jennifer Kent) (Patreon)

48/100

Spoilers.

Not generally a huge fan of the rape/revenge genre (Irreversible's power derives in large part from its being perversely structured as revenge/rape), and the first half of this one, during which it plays like a straightforward Ozploitation period piece, just seemed grimly and somewhat monotonously unpleasant, horrible for horrible's sake. Kent deliberately undermines our identification with Clare by writing her as bluntly racist, and makes a point of having her kill the most (albeit certainly not very) sympathetic villain first, in a spectacularly brutal way. The racism turns out to be tactical, not just historically accurate, and I warmed to the film a bit as Clare and Billy's relationship gradually moves to the forefront (while also feeling grateful that Kent doesn't engineer an implausible romance). But the avenging-angel aspect feels incoherent rather than complex, especially given how cartoonishly evil Claflin's Lieutenant is throughout. In theory, I admire the moment when Clare has an easy shot at Hawkins but freezes, allowing him to spot and wing her instead—I just don't believe that's the same woman who'd pulled an Irreversible (using a rifle butt in lieu of a fire extinguisher) just a little while earlier, sans hesitation. One could argue, I suppose, that she's haunted by that murder, which arrests her will to commit another; Kent encourages that idea by having the victim's smashed, bloody face appear to Clare in her nightmares. But those visions are too diffuse (she also imagines hearing her dead baby cry, seeing her dead husband, the Lieutenant, etc.) to carry significant emotional weight, and Franciosi (who's one of The Fall's weaker elements imo—that's the RTÉ/BBC TV series, not the Tarsem film) fails to delineate the necessary psychological shift, expressing whatever emotion (ferocity, indecision) a given scene obviously dictates without forging credible connections en route. Consequently, Clare's climactic accusatory speech and song left me indifferent, even as I again theoretically admired Kent's genre subversion—she eschews physical violence, but the intended elegant public shiv depends upon a bone-deep understanding of this woman that The Nightingale doesn't provide. Ultimately, I think I might have preferred seeing her spit on all of their graves.