“Allure,” the debut feature from brothers Jason and Carlos Sanchez, raised a few eyebrows at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival when it debuted under the name “A Worthy Companion.” The film follows Laura (Evan Rachel Wood) as she becomes obsessed with, and eventually kidnaps, a teenager named Eva (Julia Sarah Stone). The film, though shrouded in impenetrable gloom, offers a complex character sketch of its protagonist that’s just interesting enough to make you clench your teeth and bravely shoulder on.
Laura, a young woman with a dark look and an even darker personality, works at a cleaning company owned by her father (Denis O’Hare). Her unhinged side is apparent from the film’s opening scene, when she initiates aggressive sex with an anonymous man before choking him so hard he leaves. A more tender—if still provocative—part of Laura shines through, soon after, when she cleans a house and becomes intrigued by the owner’s teenage daughter, Eva. The diminutive girl, who plays classical piano, but still worships Nirvana, is clearly taken with Laura. When Eva’s suffocating mother is poised to move in with a boyfriend Eva despises, Laura oh-so-casually offers her an out.
The two start living together and are soon sharing a bed, as well as the occasional confusing kiss. Laura is thrilled until their honeymoon-period is cut short when detectives visit her workplace. She flies into a rage and lashes out at Eva for the first time, insisting that Eva can’t call her mother or go home. “Nobody listens to what you have to say except me,” Laura tells her. “And that’s the truth.”
This is the first in a series of abusive episodes, both emotional and physical. Laura goads Eva into drinking and smoking more than she can handle, and locks her in a windowless room. She convinces Eva to hide from the world, so as not to get Laura in trouble, and lashes out whenever Eva connects with others. Laura becomes more and more controlling of Eva, as she feels her slipping away. Fight scenes are bookended by heartbreaking glimpses into Eva’s ambivalence: her attempt to get on a bus, her longing glances at normal girls her own age. Laura’s world begins to unravel after the man from the opening scene jumps her in a hotel room. She lies to Eva about her attacker, unwilling to admit she sought sex from someone else after an awkward failure at consummating their relationship. The lie spawns a series of revelatory interactions between Laura and her father, which in turn change her and Eva’s relationship for good.
“Allure” gets a lot of things right. Its performances are first-rate. Laura provides Evan Rachel Wood with ample opportunity to bust out of her corny cable TV confines, and she does so with a seductive veracity we’ve hardly seen since her role in “Thirteen.” Julia Sarah Stone offers a stunningly nuanced performance as Eva, imbuing her every movement and utterance with a kind of desire-repulsion-confusion that feels wholly appropriate for a teenager stuck in the washing machine-like rhythm of an abusive relationship. Other strokes of brilliance include Denis O’Hare’s conflicted turn and Sara Mishara’s breathtaking cinematography. Key moments of connection between Laura and Eva are punctuated by enthralling shots of a body falling through reddish darkness. These shots are so haunting they won’t leave your head for days.
The standout characters and visuals might be a testament to the Sanchez’s writing, though their screenplay is far from flawless. The dialogue between characters occasionally dips into an on-the-nose territory, and some extreme moments feel forced. In one straitlaced scene, Laura goes off on her own brother for making fun of her penchant for Crocs (“They’re slip resistant,” duh). When Eva wonders why Laura was so bristly, Laura screams, “I say what you can and cannot do! That’s why!” The whole sequence is as unsubtle and bewildering as a blow to the head.
The overall story, however, is a promising start from the brothers. This isn’t a lesbian romance, or even really a lesbian movie at all. The film is an examination of what happens when a depraved person is allowed to fuel her obsession, but it’s also a refreshingly nuanced look at that person. “Allure” doesn’t make any excuses for Laura, it just shows her for who she is: a human being in pain. This script offers some astonishingly rich female characters, and the film rarely feels misogynistic or objectifying, despite its subject matter.
While “Allure” marks a strong debut, it’s also a tough watch. This movie could dishearten Yorgos Lanthimos. Still, it’s a well-made, gutsy film. So if you can withstand the whole soul-crushing feature, you’ll probably be glad you stuck it out. If “glad” is an emotion you can still feel afterward. [B]