I have a number of actors I will always watch in anything, but sometimes I forget about them until I am scrolling for my next watch and see their name attached to something. It's easier for me to keep up with the films of mainstream stars from the USA and UK, which is obviously just confirming the bias I tend to have, but if a film stars Adèle Exarchopoulos, for example, then I want to get around to it. The same goes for Nina Hoss, so often used brilliantly by the talented writer-director Christian Petzold. I knew nothing about Pelican Blood before I pressed play, aside from the fact that it starred Nina Hoss.
Hoss plays Wiebke, a woman who spends her time training horses for the police and looking after her adopted daughter, Nikolina (Adelia-Constance Ocleppo). She seems quite content, but also wants to help another child. That leads to her adopting a 5-year-old named Raya (Katerina Lipovska). Raya comes with a lot of issues though, none of which are apparent from the first encounter with her. Can Wiebke make things work while maintaining a balance between her family time and work commitments? Is the problem with Raya something more sinister and powerful than the kind a caring parental figure can deal with?
The second feature to be both written and directed by Katrin Gebbe, this proves two things. I am right to keep watching anything that has Nina Hoss in a main role, and I should remember to check out the debut feature from Gebbe. While this is far from perfect, particularly in a second half that seems to lose confidence when a steady hand is required to take it in one direction or another, it's a unique and dark drama that plays around with "The Bad Seed" concept in a manner that is, for the most part, grounded and appropriately perplexing.
Hoss is fantastic in a lead role that gives her a lot of difficult interactions with the people around her, whether they're children or the few adults moving in and out of the main narrative. She may have more patience than many viewers (and certainly has a lot more patience than myself), but her performance has a hint of desperation and strong will running through it that makes it easier to believe how far she will go as she tries to connect with a child who seems destined to be abandoned. Lipovska is scarily intense as that child, although it's hard to see how much she acts out of spite and how much she acts out of lacking the guidance and context others have had in their lives. Ocleppo has a lot less to do, but she does enough to show how much she is impacted by the ongoing situation. There are a few other characters, but the main one to mention is Benedikt, played by Murathan Muslu in a way that positions him as being a really good mix of being both strong and open-hearted for the right person, and Wiebke could be the right person.
Gebbe has a good instinct for what to show and what to leave just out of frame, and she's happy to leave some questions unanswered, but she's helped by cinematographer Moritz Schultheiß, editor Heike Gnida, and everyone else collaborating on the look and feel of something that can then stay completely focused on the strange battle of wills taking place between a parent and child. There's no guarantee that you will come away from Pelican Blood satisfied, but it has enough interesting ideas in the mix to make it worth your time . . . especially if you've ever had experience with a child during some tantrum-filled pre-school years.
7/10
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