'Pin Cushion' Misanthropy Makes Todd Solondz Looks Soft [Boston Underground Film Festival Review]

Deborah Haywood’s “Pin Cushion” is a decidedly hateful movie. And it’s indiscriminating in its hatred; it loathes everyone. “Pin Cushion” is full of viciously mean-spirited characters and ambivalent pedestrians; whenever you think a character is about to do the right thing, they go ahead and do something far worse than you could have imagined. Everyone aside from the two lead characters is evil; people go about their daily lives looking to inflict as much pain and damage unto others as is humanly possible. Todd Solondz couldn’t dream up characters as mundanely wicked as those that populate this film.

“Pin Cushion” opens with Iona (Lily Newmark) and her mother Lyn (Joanna Scanlan) relocating to a new town for what doesn’t seem like the first time. They want to leave the past in the past and start anew. Haywood’s view of humanity is summed up neatly in one of the film’s first scenes, where—apropos of nothing— some local boys mock Lyn’s hunchback, throwing debris at her backside as she strolls down the street.

The film begins unassumingly, a mother-daughter coming-of-age story not too far afield from something like “Lady Bird.” It has its quirks, to be sure, but what respectable British indie dramedy doesn’t? Iona initially has trouble making friends at school; she courts the popular girls to no avail while ignoring the uncool outcast who sits beside her in class. The story writes itself from there: she’ll befriend the cool kids, but will eventually see them for the mean-girls they are and find a lasting friendship with the misfit. Right? Wrong. Very, very wrong.

Instead, on Iona’s first day of school, mean-girl pack leader Keeley (Sacha Cordy-Nice) asks her if she’s ever “sucked cock.” Iona is a bit perplexed; she barely knows what that means. Keeley goes on to ask if Iona’s ever been fingered, and if so, “how many fingers can you take?” Iona holds up an innocent seven fingers. This scene is the first indicator that “Pin Cushion” is no ordinary British indie coming-of-age dramedy.

By the time the movie arrives at the midpoint scene in which Lyn attempts to saw off her hump in a bathtub, there’s no question to its manner. “Pin Cushion” is the type of movie where people reach out for help only to find the most brutal rejection. It’s a worst-case scenario cautionary tale about the effects of bullying (which, come to think of it, all schoolyard bullies everywhere should be forced to watch “Pin Cushion,” it would do them some good).

Haywood brilliantly subverts her audience’s expectations at every step of the way. She introduces characters as tropes and steers them into the opposite direction. A thoughtful support group leader ends up saying the most hurtful thing of all. An elderly neighbor looks the other way when Lyn needs help and friendship. A sincerely devoted boyfriend dumps Iona at the drop of a hat when a more popular girl shows a bit of interest. A bully with a heart of gold turns out to not have a heart at all.

Haywood presents us with a pure portrayal of self-consciousness in Lyn, whose toxic body-image issues have been dogging her for decades. It’s in every tragic closeup of Scanlan’s face, in every conversation she has with her daughter. She lies about going out on dates and sits on a park bench for hours on end every night to make the lie believable. Iona imbibes her mother’s acute self-consciousness and develops body dysmorphia problems of her own, which Keeley and her friends are happy to exploit.

Some have interpreted the final moments of “Pin Cushion” as being optimistic for Iona’s future (and humanity in general). No reading of a film is objectively incorrect, but this one might be the exception that proves the rule. No person learns anything in Haywood’s world, no one gets their comeuppance, and no one gets a happy ending. Happiness, in “Pin Cushion,” is barely a band-aid. It’s a piece of scotch tape that is bound to come off in the rain.

Haywood’s direction is modest, there’s some stylization in Iona’s wish-fulfillment fantasies, but for the most part, the camera is unobstructive. More critical is Haywood’s unflinchingly misanthropic script and the film’s two central performances. Newmark, and especially Joanna Scanlan, are remarkable in the movie. Scanlan’s Lyn garners a tremendous amount of sympathy in no small part due to her thoughtful, empathetic performance. Newmark is similarly outstanding as Iona, in a role that becomes increasingly demanding as the film progresses. She’s going to be a big deal as a result of this film, and she deserves it—she goes to some truly dark places in the final act of “Pin Cushion,” it’s an admirable performance that deserves recognition.

Sacha Cordy-Nice deserves recognition, too, for her portrayal of one of the most vicious high-school bullies in film history. She has one fleeting moment of humanity, but like all of Haywood’s non-protagonist characters immediately reverts to extreme inhumanity. Cordy-Nice will make you loathe Keeley as much as you’ve ever loathed a movie villain in your filmgoing life.

“Pin Cushion” is not a happy film. The filmic discourse seems to have landed on the word “quirky” to describe it, which does everybody involved a disservice. Haywood has nothing in common with Wes Anderson, and her outlook is aggressively dissimilar from Greta Gerwig’s. “Pin Cushion” portrays the worst of humanity, and it will make you feel like crap, but it ushers in a new voice in cinema worth listening to and a sharp female one at that. [B+]