As the First World War drags on, Pearl, a young woman living on the family farm with her parents, hopes for the return of her husband, who has gone to the front. But even more, the young woman longs for another life. She dreams of dancing at the cinema, as in the silent films that she devours in secret, suffocating between an authoritarian mother and a father rendered invalid by the raging influenza pandemic. Pearl can no longer bear her bleak reality, she gives free rein to her whimsical and murderous impulses more and more.
With Pearlrecently screened at midnight at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and in theaters on Friday, filmmaker Ti West and star Mia Goth offer a macabre, bizarre and frankly successful prequel to their brilliant X.
As an indication, in XMia Goth played Maxine, a young woman eager for fame getting ready to shoot a porn movie on a farm, around 1979. One by one, the members of the film crew are massacred by the old mistress of the house: Pearl, also performed by Mia Goth in remarkable prosthetic makeup.
So here is the fabulously gifted actress back to play the young version of Pearl this time.
However, as Ti West pointed out (House of the Devil, The Innkeepers) at TIFF for the benefit of a delirious room, useless to have seen X to understand or appreciate Pearl. That being so, who saw X will find in Pearl many allusions and references and many other intriguing games of mirrors: the heroine’s rejection of conventions and social diktats, intergenerational conflict between her and her parents, artistic aspirations, murder as an outlet…
One of the many pleasing aspects of Pearlwhich Ti West filmed simultaneously with X, is that this most recent film, for all its links with its predecessor, displays its own visual and narrative identity. In XWest summoned the classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hopper, 1974), from the decor to the grainy handling of the image. In Pearl, the filmmaker opts on the contrary for a palette of vibrant colors of the Technicolor type of yesteryear and resorts to certain deliberately artificial and old-fashioned effects. It’s a bit as if Douglas Sirk had decided to make a horror film rather than one of his splendid melodramas.
Unpredictable temperament
The narrative construction is not the same either. Thus, it happens that Pearl progresses slowly, but steadily, in order to establish, nourish and then expand moments of tension. Other passages, on the other hand, occur and end abruptly. Such a bias could have resulted in a lack of fluidity or a bumpy ride, but it is not. On the contrary, it suits the film perfectly, since it reflects the unpredictable temperament of the protagonist, a young woman who is sometimes sweet and dreamy, sometimes a screaming version brandishing an axe.
Moreover, there are shots that remain in memory, that are embedded there. Several of them come under horrifying dazzling. The film is also interspersed with brief quasi-experimental asides, again in contrast with X. Conversely, in terms of similarities, Pearl is also full of winks and homages, for example to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?and especially to The Wizard of Oz (the sequence, to say the least, unforgettable with the scarecrow).
The result, for a second time, is an eminently complex and fascinating portrait of a woman. Mia Goth, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ti West, isn’t trying to make Pearl endearing or likeable: her actions are appalling, indefensible. Except that, despite all of this, Pearl never becomes repulsive or unsympathetic, which adds a welcome level of discomfort to a film clearly unwilling to shock to shock. Therein lies the genius of Mia Goth and Ti West. Yes, both are already busy with the sequel that will complete the trilogy: MaXXXine. And for once, this is a sequel that we are very, very eager to discover.