Pearl Movie Review: (Venice 79) Technicolor Violence In The X Prequel, The Girl’s Ambition Will Soon Lead To Her Madness
Stars: David Corenswet, Mia Goth, Emma Jenkins-Purro
Director: Ti West
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half star) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
After the unexpected success of X: A Sexy Horror Story, the prequel completely focused on the character played by Mia Goth arrives less than a year later. Pearl Movie, whose review we are offering you, was presented out of competition at the 79th international film art exhibition in Venice and is the story of the old woman who terrorized the troupe intent on shooting porn in the previous film and who, despite the kilos of makeup made her unrecognizable, she was played by the same protagonist. It all started with a scriptwriting exercise by Mia Goth, who in writing the background of her villain for pleasure, gave life to a story so consistent that it led the director to make another film.
Pearl, also produced by A24, was made at the same time as X during the pandemic and although the two projects appear very different, it is a more than valid insight into what has already been shown. Many themes already identified in the previous film are explored here and examined in every aspect, focusing more on the psychological background of the characters than on the metanarrative discourse relating to cinema and the horror genre.
Pearl Movie Review: The Story
Pearl is a young girl with a dream of becoming a movie star. Since she was a child she has lived on the family farm with her parents, surrounded by nature and animals. Despite her time passing and the girl growing up, her childhood dreams remain the same and constantly clash with the hatred of her mother, intolerant of the hopeful attitude of her daughter. In addition, his father has long since fallen victim to the Spanish flu, leaving his mother and daughter alone to take care of the house and him, now stuck in a wheelchair. Pearl is also married to Howard, who went to the front to fight the First World War that seems to be coming to an end.
Despite the constant letters that the two exchange, the girl suffers from the absence of her beloved and the films that they screen from time to time at the cinema are her only refuge from a life that does not feel like hers. When a church group organizes a competition to find a new dancer to add to the group, Pearl can’t miss her chance. Willing to do anything to achieve her goals, she will have to contend with the opposition of her mother who has no intention of compromising. You don’t need to have seen the first movie, but it sure helps: the year is 1918, about 60 before the events narrated in X, and Mia Goth plays a girl who works hard on the family farm, longing for her husband Howard to return who is fighting in Europe. The war is almost over and the Spanish flu is almost over, though Pearl has yet to wear a mask when she goes to town on her errands. However, the young woman is deeply unhappy, and her marginalization increases her frustration and her disturbing behavior.
Pearl Movie Review and Analysis
If X took full inspiration from slasher cinema and Tobe Hooper, Pearl’s imagery takes a step back in time by aiming at Douglas Sirk’s melodramas and Technicolor cinema. The photography accentuates the colors to the maximum, from the costumes to the sets, creating an unrealistic and cartoony atmosphere, the iris transitions and the loaded acting of Mia Goth are a clear homage to the cinema of the 50 ‘that defines the imagery of the whole movie. If, however, X’s quotation was justified by his reasoning on the genre and the medium, Pearl points to the packaging, to an aesthetic that is closely linked to the setting but is not supported by anything else. This is not a limit for the film, which as well as the previous one in the first hour prepares the ground for what will come later and which will replace the idyll with a bloodbath.
If X took full inspiration from slasher cinema and Tobe Hooper, Pearl is the classic naive girl (and anything but innocent), who argues with her cow Charlie and is blissful between nature and animals, hiding a dark side ready to burst into a murderous fury. It is not a surprise for the viewer who already knows the future of the protagonist and yet the construction of the character is by no means taken for granted. The girl is unable to accept failure and a life different from the one she had imagined, willing to do anything to get what she wants. Her bond with Maxine (protagonist of X) is therefore made even more evident and the similarities between the two characters, both coming from a limiting and conservative family, make the prequel an in-depth study that is not at all superfluous given the premises from which it starts.
The metanarrative component is still present, but decidedly more subtle and less justified. Everything takes place during a Spanish epidemic, the characters wear masks even to the cinema and isolate themselves for fear of contracting the “germ” repeating over and over again the nuisance caused by the flu. The constant references to the virus, however, appear redundant and superfluous, devoid of real use. More interesting is the tone, constantly poised between irony and restlessness, also thanks to the spectacular performance of Mia Goth, the engine of the entire film. Insanity is a double-edged sword and can provoke both laughter and fright from the total absence of reasoning. All this therefore refers to the subjectivity of the public who could become estranged in front of Pearl’s delusional madness as much as laugh at her oddities.
The direction of Ti West therefore continues to surprise by packaging a much more digestible film than the previous one, but which perhaps has less to say. Probably Pearl will meet more easily the favor of the public thanks to a more fascinating aesthetic and greater attention to the construction and the deepening of the characters to the detriment of the Meta cinematographic component that had made us so appreciate X. It arises naturally to ask what would be the idea for the only mentioned third chapter, which at this point if it ever comes out, we will welcome with open arms.
Pearl is Ti West‘s most feminine, camp and fun film. Mia Goth‘s character may very well inhabit the House of The Devil that the director painstakingly painted in the 2009 film, but she could also wow us in a cabaret show and make us die of laughter. Not only that: in its total artificiality, Pearl manages to find a foothold with the present, giving life to one of the few – if not none – pandemic horror that has found distribution in Italy and drawing on the war context only for what is functional to the story of a villain’s backstory. What Pearl will become in X it is the result of a very rigid upbringing but, above all, of the isolation imposed both by those around her and fearing for her and by the compulsion to behave as an “angel of the hearth” while the men have gone to war and there is an epidemic terrible going on.
Pearl‘s character will terrify in X but, paradoxically, in this prequel, she is the only one who is never afraid. Pearl looks to the future with hope, she wants to leave for Europe, which will give her culture and entertainment, and leave behind a country setting that offers no future to those who show curiosity and talent. Only by taking refuge in the cinema or the vastness of the countryside, Pearl can soar to the highest, where she shines that star to which she has entrusted the dream of “becoming the greatest star in the world”, to escape far, far away.
The direction of Ti West follows Pearl’s frenzied thoughts, which dictate different approaches to physicality: we pass from dream sequences to extremely agile editing solutions, and we get lost between the vivacity of colors that marks Pearl’s vision of the world and the rigidity of a cumbersome responsibility that prohibits dreaming. Pearl’s upright German mother wears Victorian clothes and is linked to an idea of Europe completely o that of her daughter, on which she pours all the frustrations of a family balance that has long since broken and how it is “told “Life at home is opposed to visual solutions designed to explore Pearl’s mind.
Pearl Movie Review: The Last Words
X- A Sexy Horror Story will bring a young rising porn star to Pearl’s old home. Pearl will look at Maxime greedily, trying to suck all the talent she had from her and it’s gone to waste. It seems impossible that the colorful Pearl could turn into a ghostly presence in X- A Sexy Horror Story and the awareness of her already makes Pearl’s journey even sadder. But fear not: if X’s Pearl scares you, you can always go back and see the world through the eyes of the young Pearl, a little Dorothy .from which the red shoes were stolen.
