TIFF 2020: Violation
tiff 2020Writer, director and star Madeleine Sims-Fewer's Violation is a tense and brooding portrait of trauma and horror encased in a strong central performance but ultimately undone by a chaotic narrative and poor screenplay.
First and foremost, Sims-Fewer has achieved quite the feat with Violation. In the directing department, she does quite a firm job of depicting mood through strong imagery, as well as her specific choices behind the camera with cinematographer Adam Crosby eliciting emotional mood and intimacy, when the film wants to do so. Equally, in moments of fear and trauma, Crosby and Sims-Fewer dictate the flow of mood brilliantly in an effective partnership to covey utter torment for the audience to witness.
Equally as impressive is Sims-Fewer's performance as Miriam. The actress conveys a superb mentally of a bruised and physiologically battered person that slowly but surely succumbs to the titular namesake. The conviction of range is superb and will destroy the audience on numerous occasions with brutality that the character foresees and witnesses.
The terrific talent as both a performer and director here is on show with how Sims-Fewer dictates the flow, width and length allocated to each scene. The decision to utilise long takes for the audience to have to witness along with being unable to escape the trauma depicted is incredibly effective for immersion but also to covey how horrifying these events are for Miriam.
Granted, on occasion, Sims-Fewer and co-writer Dusty Mancinelli do stumble with their screenplay. Sims-Fewer perfectly embodies mood and trauma through the powerful imagery and filmmaking ability behind the camera. It is what the film does not say aloud which is most powerful and when the film does entail characters confiding in what has happened, makes for deeply uncomfortable viewing. That being said, it is the combative nature of the screenplay that just does not hit as hard, and ultimately when Miriam descends into her trauma, it becomes overly apparent that saying less, speaks more.
Nevertheless, the most significant issue with Violation is the edit. Muddled and overly complex, editor Gabriella Wallace does not add to conviction of the piece. For the most part, it coveys its point to a degree of enigmatic nature and through due process of the context of the film such nature works. With that said, there is a narrative decision to piece the story in a non-cyclical fashion, which on paper works due to the context of the plot, but throughout causes a jarring effect for the viewer. Pivotal scenes are out of order, and the emotional conviction that should proceed and follow these traumatic sequences falls flat due to the nature of its proceedings feeling empty.
Thankfully, both editing and screenplay do not mislead, and ultimately what Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli have crafted here is a terrifically performed feature on the depths of trauma. Not only the social drowning of the truth but the physical and physiological repercussions of the very act done upon Sims-Fewer's Miriam.
