Direction: Sebastián Lelio
Country: Ireland / UK / USA
From the director of Gloria (2013) and A Fantastic Woman (2017), The Wonder won’t make you energized as it engages in a slow cooking process with lack of spices. The film, based on the book by Emma Donoghue and co-written by Lelio and Alice Birch (Lady MacBeth, 2016), is a lugubrious and uninventive mystery film soaked in mysticism and contemplation that, without betraying its lyrical style, never grips tightly. The lukewarm, spiritless atmosphere refuses to leave until the end, following a script in need of more paradox and a less debilitated conclusion. On the other hand, it raises deep questions about religion and its interpenetration with human realities.
Set in a rural 19th-century Irish village, the story depicts the arrival of an English nurse (Florence Pugh), hired by a committee of curious men - believers and skeptics - to observe a devotee 11-year-old girl (Kíla Lord Cassidy) who survives without eating. Is she a saint, a witch, or a haunted person? The hidden secrets are revealed with the help of a journalist (Tom Burke) willing to write an article about the case for the Daily Telegraph.
Having a faltering narrative rhythm as its worst enemy and the cinematography as its strongest quality, The Wonder is more an exercise in mood with no visible threats. It will leave you with less than what you demand for a story of this nature.
