Rare Beasts
RARE BEASTS - WESTERN EDGE PICTURES
Billie Piper's directorial debut, Rare Beasts, is a tremendously intriguing and heartfelt existential crisis that explores gender and societal issues in a gloriously intimate and charismatic feature.
As directorial debuts go, Rare Beasts is a knockout. Small but intimately produced with meaning and heart, Piper's film contains a captivating rhyme and reason. Exploring feminity and gender issues with a profound consequence and examination of fragility. Not only does Piper explore the ideal of what society projects in media as the perfect body and family, but the voice of being a single mother and a woman pressured in the often predatorial and insincere workplace.
The themes that Piper explores are authentic and ever so captivating, with a charismatic and profound screenplay written by the Doctor Who star. The screenplay is weighted with an incredible balance of sincerity and comedic impulse — writing that shines through in moments of comedic releif yet digs deep and does not hold back in sequences with a dark underbelly. This is not the self-indulgent cross examination presumably believed and while undoubtedly a cathartic experience, Piper dives deep in other topics such as toxic masculinity and religion with gravitas and openness.
Piper's writing is terrific and the actress’s performance is effortlessly captivating as the complex Mandy is in existential crisis mode. Piper is in full swing with a character and a performance full of bravado and heartfelt emotional range, with the latter a genuinely remarkable turn for the actress. Stamping her authority in a new realm as the writer-director — who has been somewhat shy in cinematic respects but has expertly crafted performances on the TV market — Billie Piper has made her mark known with Rare Beasts.
