There are many ways to choose what you want to write about when you spend so much time watching and reviewing movies. A lot of people online will prefer to write about something they love or hate. It makes the whole thing easier, and the end result will often appeal to the binary nature of discourse that seems to get the most internet traffic. It’s harder to write about something that you just thought was okay, especially when there’s no clear standard narrative. But I figured that I should write about Earwig anyway.
Paul Hilton plays Albert, a man tasked with the care of a young girl named Mia (played by Romane Hemelaers). Mia has dentures that have to be fitted daily, and Albert empties out the side fittings that collect saliva. In another plot strand, Céleste (Romola Garai) is a wounded woman who is assisted in her recuperation by a man named Laurence (Alex Lawther). These two threads intertwine, but in a strange and insubstantial way, like wisps of smoke rising into the air while winding around one another, and the ending raises just as many questions as the opening scenes.
Based on a novel by Brian Catling, which may or may not spell things out in a much clearer way than the movie, this may be a murky and muddled mess for most of the runtime, but it was always an intriguing one. I certainly preferred Earwig to the last film I saw from director Lucile Hadzihalilovic (Evolution), which also had her working with Geoff Cox on the writing side of things. This is a challenging and obtuse film, but answers feel tantalisingly close, and I have no qualms about considering it as a unique take on vampirism (there are certainly enough small details to make that a valid interpretation).
Visually, you get a world of browns and browny-greens. It’s an oppressive colour scheme throughout, making viewers feel as if they fell asleep and woke up in the bedroom of someone hosting a 1970s dinner party during the winter solstice. Everything is dark and muted, as well as being potentially dangerous, and the style certainly matches the atmosphere that the movie has in almost every frame.
While the performances are very good from all involved, they are mannered and stilted in a way that shows the characters to be seriously restricted in a variety of ways, whether reliant on others for help, waiting for instructions, or just incapable of accepting events unfolding around them. The film belongs to those crafting the visuals, but the leads have to do try hard with the sparse dialogue to convey a hefty selection of conflicting thoughts.
From Don’t Look Now to Let The Right One In, from The Shining to the filmography of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Earwig is never far from some influential touchstones, which helps the pacing while adding to the frustrating lack of any real clarity.
I ended up enjoying this, and I am happy with my final interpretation of it, but it made me work hard for that enjoyment. And I cannot say that the effort was completely worth it.
6/10
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