Since the #MeToo movement was born in October 2017 until now, there are many films that have come close to explaining the whys, hows and wheres of a practice that was as common as it was disgusting in the offices of Hollywood.
From the independent subtlety of ‘The assistant’ to the retro denunciation of ‘Blonde’ or the disaster to get on the bandwagon that was ‘The scandal’, the world of cinema has continued to denounce sexual abuse and power in high places. ‘Ella She Will’ takes a turn towards psychological terror and delves into a subject in which other, more visceral films have not quite hit the nail on the head: the elimination of trauma as the only way to heal.
Your look on a slow fire
There is a term used by film critics that is no less accurate: “to simmer”. And with few movies the term can be used more coherently than with ‘she She will’, and that is, if you were expecting a horror movie to use, with its scares, monsters and gushing blood, you will end up disappointed. Charlotte Colbert denies the full power of narrative and focuses on visual poetryAbsolutely captivating, flashy, plentiful… and, frankly, boring, on-camera canvases.
To put it that way, this film has much more to do with the San Sebastián festival than with Sitges. Its visual preciousness is addictive, but since it is not linked to any type of narrative thread, at times it seems to be more part of a modern art museum exhibition than a typical movie. And while this will take some away, others will feel detached from what you want to tell, nullifying its intentions.
Acts Occur in ‘She Will’ without binding, almost caked together, as if obstructed and supporting the weight of its tireless visual aspect. The friendship between the two protagonists, almost turned into a brotherhood, occurs without much explanation beyond the implicit sorority or the twinning in terms of traumas, like witchcraft or the visions of the main character, a transcript of Norma Desmond with homicidal desires.
I’m ready for my close up
‘She will’ has good ideas, but gets lost in their execution: Believing itself to be more innovative than it really is, its alleged collection of visual poems falls short, half throttle. Yes, it has some powerful images, but without union or a joint dramatic charge it stays in a simple technical demonstration that is not able, ultimately, to leave a trace.
That does not mean that everything is negative or imposed on the tape, of course. In fact, it has two elements that work perfectly. First, pure horror scenes: by focusing more on psychological drama and character photography, ‘She will’ falls into the cauldron of what they have come to call “high terror”. But when he drops those pretensions and takes a more direct approach to the genre, he manages to create the perfect atmosphere and cap off a scene of gimmicky, classic witchy horror that goes beyond your typical supernatural flick.
The second, the intentions: far from trying to narrate an incident explicitly as so many have done before her, ‘She will’ focuses on overcoming trauma, first in a more subtle way and then quite explicitly. His intention is not to scandalize, but to create around the reparation. And if that reparation, the elimination of the trauma, comes from the hand of a bloody vendetta, well, that’s what we take with us.
But when will it?
The beginning of the film is fabulous: accurate close-ups, an internal monologue, an almost symmetrical moment, showing a wrinkled actress who has just had a mastectomy and hates human contact. Little by little we are understanding the reason for her motives, but it is true that the film asks the viewer for much more than she is willing to give him. In other words: the reward for being attentive is not worth it.
‘She will’ it is, against the image she has of herself… bland. At this point, some spectacular planes are not going to manage to take away the sensation of being watching an assortment of well-intentioned but poorly spun platitudesspectacular in their photography but that do not leave any subsequent memory in the viewer.
This movie is a reverie that eschews classical narrative but at the same time it does not stop daring to be openly abstract, getting lost between two worlds and genres: drama, terror, comedy and even supernatural action. they come together, separate and crumble, composing a nucleus that lacks decision and identity to be the special and defining work that it wants to be.