There’s something about Isabelle Fuhrman’s face. Her splatter of freckles, her sharp cheekbones, her narrow brow — she looks most natural when a bit unhinged, a snarl at her lips or mania wrinkling her forehead. Viewers will recognize her best as the murderous orphan Esther from “The Orphan” or the relentless killer Clove from “The Hunger Games.” Lauren Hadaway made an inspired choice when she cast her as the lead in her first feature, “The Novice,” a breathtaking fable about self-flagellation, hubris, and college rowing.
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Fuhrman plays Alex Dall, a freshman at the prestigious Wellington University. From the jump, the best word to describe Alex is “intense” — she takes a test twice and then sprints to the basement of a cavernous gym to sign up as a novice on the rowing team. It’s apparent that Alex is not a natural at the sport, unlike her teammate, Jamie (Amy Forsyth), who needs to advance to the varsity team for a scholarship. Still, she persists, her thoughts immediately crowded with ergometer mantras. As Alex claws her way to the top of the novices and sets her unflinching gaze on varsity, her mental and physical health implode.
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Alex is a supernova, burning through life until she has no fuel left. She sleeps as little as possible, majors in her worst subject, beats her body into shape for a sport it wasn’t built for. When she really wants something, it’s like the whole world stops — and Hadaway’s virtuosic filmmaking reflects that. The film presents Alex alone in an empty gym for her first extensive trial on the ergs. She moves in slow motion, the lighting almost intimate, as sweat floats off of her. But when the test is over, and reality crashes in, Alex collapses to the floor in a room full of teammates, unable to move. This pattern repeats throughout the film, as Hadaway takes care to both romanticize and unflinchingly depict Alex’s self-brutalization. Shots of live crabs being thrown into boiling water occasionally drive the point home.
The immersive power of “The Novice” is a testament to Fuhrman’s performance and Hadaway’s direction, as well as the efforts of cinematographer Todd Martin, composer Alex Weston and sound mixer Scott Bell. Blurred focus, cacophonous sound and a frenetic score intermingle at the film’s highest boiling points (which, somehow, only get higher throughout its 96-minute duration). Hadaway was clearly influenced by movies like “Black Swan” and “Whiplash,” the latter of which she worked on as a sound editor, and it’s difficult not to recall David Fincher’s iconic rowing sequence from “The Social Network” at certain points.
Still, this film stands entirely on its own, not least of which because it is the only female-directed title in the aforementioned group. Men matter refreshingly little in “The Novice,” even as audience members. Hadaway makes no effort to doll up her sweat-soaked trainwreck of a protagonist, nor does romance save Alex from herself. (After unsatisfying frat boy sex, she takes up with a hot, lesbian TA played by the model Dilone, but perfectionism still comes first.)
This film more than proves its director and lead’s talents. Sure, it’s gut-wrenching, but film fans will also find it exhilarating. It is the artistic equivalent of watching a well-trained underdog vault the finish line at her first big race. Its protagonist may be inches away from burnout, but “The Novice” is a star with millennia left of shine. [A]