SHE WILL is the type of movie that leaves viewers thinking in metaphors. It’s an immaculately constructed painting that reveals itself with new layers and new meanings as one approaches from different angles and in different lights. It’s the comforting, yet discomfiting, warmth that can spring from thinking hateful thoughts of the people who truly deserve something terrible to befall them. It’s that small segment of time in between very late at night and far too early in the morning, a liminal state that feels culled from storybooks and the perfect moment for something miraculous — or cataclysmic — to happen. It’s the tranquility of walking alone in the woods on an autumn day, but the cold is beginning to creep in, and the path is becoming a bit harder to find… and yet that doesn’t seem something totally unfortunate. It is astounding that this is director and co-writer Charlotte Colbert’s first feature length film because it has the assured hand of an artist that is familiar with all the tricks of the trade and now wants to wield them in a bold and fantastic manner.
Veronica Ghent (Alice Krige) is an aging actress off to a woodland retreat following a surgical procedure. She is accompanied by her nurse/assistant Desi (Kota Eberhardt) and pursued by news that Eric Hathbourne (Malcolm McDowell), the director who “discovered” Veronica decades ago for his film “Navajo Frontier”, is set to be knighted and about to follow up on “Navajo Frontier” but with a new, young actress. While she was promised a secluded experience in the Scottish forest, the famed actress encounters a few bothersome guests at the retreat and an eccentric leader (Rupert Everett) who is excellent at spewing New Age nonsense but not very good at much else. Luckily, Veronica and Desi are relocated away from the group in their own private cabin. They discover that these woods are thought to be such a magical and rejuvenating place as they were the site where many women were burned for witchcraft centuries earlier. The nights unfold as Veronica begins to travel across time and space and deep within her own mind to confront pain and anger that refused to wither with age, and she and Desi discover new ways to see the old world about them.
Director Colbert (who co-wrote with Kitty Percy) has an extensive background in multiple artistic mediums such as photography, sculpture, and short films. All that experience comes into play with SHE WILL, a sensuous film that is truly a marvel to experience. Through sound design, shot composition, color palettes, performances, and more, Colbert and her team touch upon all the senses in an incredibly immersive way where audiences will feel the mud between their toes, smell the smoke wafting from charcoal fires, taste the acrid shrooms that are taken, and dazzled but exquisite sets, costumes, and framing. Dario Argento is a producer of SHE WILL and while Colbert doesn’t indulge in the glaring neons or ironic pastels of the Giallo master’s aesthetic, she nevertheless possesses a mastery of color that creates rich fields of vision out of more muted colors like grays, browns, burgundy, and more that are found in the autumnal forests.
Working with DP Jamie Ramsay and production designer Laura Ellis Cricks, Colbert has crafted a pastoral tale that is somehow timeless and especially contemporary. SHE WILL’s story takes place in liminal spaces — between the waking and dreaming world, and between the present and the past — and the settings reflect this with the woodlands feeling grounded but also imagery right out of fairy tales (shades of Neil Jordan’s IN THE COMPANY OF WOLVES in the misty terrain). The lone flaw in the technical aspect of SHE WILL arises in one specific CG effect late in the final act; it’s not enough to detract from the film but, due to the high level of quality of the other imagery and effects, it stands out as particularly awkward.
This visual journey is bolstered by an exquisite sound design that has voices and noises circling about the audience, while pairing impeccably with Clint Mansell’s score. Mansell, arguably the best film composer working today, uses choral sounds and chants amidst his usual strings and percussions that add to the Pagan/pre-Christendom feel of the environment that takes hold of Veronica, all while using aural themes for characters and emotions that build to a unified tapestry of story told purely through the music.
The story hits a few familiar beats: a seemingly cold and angry person is in fact vulnerable and hurting; background plot threads move their way to the foreground as the themes become more pronounced; certain characters behave exactly as viewers expect and their fates can be guessed early on. But that’s not really important because it’s in the telling that SHE WILL’s story shines brightest. Not just with its gorgeous use of audio and visual language, but also wondrous performances by the actors. Everett and the other guests at the retreat are fun side characters that seem to pop up in many a British comedy set a hotel or some other getaway, but their comic relief never reduces them to caricatures. McDowell uses his past performances and life experiences to imbue Hathbourne with an enfant terrible air that starts off as provocatively playful before revealing something much more repugnant underneath.
Eberhardt’s Desi could easily be the audience surrogate/light spirit foil to Veronica — which she is — but the characterization expands from those plot devices into a lived-in person that has her own depth and tragedies and more, which are displayed naturally through interaction with Veronica or groundskeeper Owen (Jack Greenlees). And it’s no small feat that Eberhardt is as engaging as she is when sharing the screen with Krige. Without being too presumptive, Veronica feels pulled from the life of the celebrated actress (and, in many tragic cases, from the lives of most women in the film industry), who brings with her a gravitas of decades of a career in all types of works at all levels of prestige. Through Krige’s performance, Veronica is equally exhausted and defiant and her journey to confront her ghosts to break free of them is a beautiful, difficult, tragic, and inspiring arc that Krige sells with that outstanding mixture of fragility and grit. Veronica starts off in a familiar mold of the snarky old coot with a dismissive quip for every occasion and person. SHE WILL isn’t about Veronica’s edges being smoothed off to find the kinder gentler soul within but working with her anger and pain to transcend beyond the darkness that has been eating away at her for years.
SHE WILL is simply an incredible film that is a genuine feast for the senses, the mind, and the heart. It’s not a feel-good story, nor does it languish in the dire, but possess multitudes that lulls viewers into a dreamlike trance to process the past and embrace necessary changes. Funny one moment, creepy the next, but always emotionally engaging, Colbert’s film is an unbelievable triumph. It’s not a flashy story or anything that will revolutionize genre filmmaking, but SHE WILL is the type of movie that will linger in the dreams of its audience and spur on new tales to bewitch future generations; and it’s the kind of picture that could easily fall through the cracks when in fact it demands to be seen and celebrated by as many people as possible.
Tags: Alice Krige, Charlotte Colbert, Clint Mansell, Dan Turner, dario argento, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest 2021, Jack Greenlees, Jamie Ramsay, Joanna Bacon, John McCrea, Jonathan Aris, Kenneth Collard, Kitty Percy, Kota Eberhardt, Laura Ellis Cricks, Malcolm McDowell, Matyas Fekete, Olwen Fouéré, Rupert Everett, Witches, Yorgos Mavropsaridis
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