In 2018, the Netflix production Bird Box (Cold in the eyes) became a real phenomenon. The film remains one of Sandra Bullock’s biggest career successes. No wonder, then, that the latter wanted to re-stack with the giant of continuous viewing. With The Unforgivable (Unforgivable), however, the American star changes register. After the post-apocalyptic shivers, we are thus entitled to a social drama. If the initial curiosity is certain to ensure an enviable popularity for the film, it would however be surprising if it continues and reaches the same heights.
Because you might as well say it from the start, The Unforgivable is a failure. A failure full of good intentions and beautiful messages, but a failure nonetheless.
We follow Ruth, who is released from prison, where she served a twenty-year sentence for the murder of a police officer. During repetitive flashes, we come back to these traumatic events involving Ruth, her sister much younger than her, Katherine, and the authorities who came to expel them from the family home following the suicide of their father.
Two decades later, Katherine lives with an adoptive family and has no memory of Ruth. A gifted pianist, the young girl is however haunted (no more flashes) by this past that her parents hide from her. And there are the two adult sons of the victim, who are plotting revenge against Ruth.
Ah and we should not forget the Ingram family, who now live in the house that was once the scene of the tragedy. John and Liz, the new owners, will find themselves embroiled in the fates of the two sisters through various coincidences and implausibilities that the plot misuses (the conversation in the car between Ruth and John is screaming).
The scenario could not be more scattered. We often have the impression of watching the condensed version of a bad soap opera. Exactly, The Unforgivable is based on a 2009 British miniseries that no doubt had more time to develop here awkwardly sketched and integrated subplots.
A star endearing
The result is a kind of choral film, but not really… The focus remains above all on Ruth, detaching herself from her for the time of sequences in the secondary characters devoid of any dramatic organicity. The way Liz becomes Ruth’s ally during the denouement, with brawl, revelation and sudden solidarity, is a good example of this great narrative nonsense that turns, in the end, into a B-thriller.
The realization does not help. Yet Nora Fingscheidt had shown real potential with her precedent System Crasher, also on Netflix. In this mass of greyish images, it is also impossible to discern Guillermo Navarro’s paw (The devil’s backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth).
In the main role, Sandra Bullock is typically endearing under a cleverly “deglamourized” exterior. No makeup, except for the one on the lips to look even less makeup, shapeless clothes and a coat that looks like a potato pocket as a second skin: the star gets serious and, in all fairness, it works.
The excellent Viola Davis, who manages to ignite two or three banal scenes, is on the other hand shamefully underused. All the way, The Unforgivable asks the question of the second chance: is everyone entitled to it? The film offers nothing very significant in response. In short, beyond its vain questions about what is forgivable or not, The Unforgivable proves to be eminently forgettable.