QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM CANNES
The director of filthy genius trans drama A Fantastic Woman (2017), and sensitive stories featuring strong women in the lead – Gloria (2013), Disobedience (2017) and Gloria Bell (2018) – has decided to make a film about sexual abuse and feminist activism, and he has a large sum of money and an enormous cast to hand. What could possibly go wrong? Everything.
Julia (Daniela Lopez) is a university student. Feminists grind the campus to halt in order to identity the male students who raped their female peers. They splash gigantic “rapists graduate at this university” signs across the internal yard and building facade. They then perform a dance number to the dean and professors demanding that the culprits are punished. The dance act is embedded within the film narrative. The Wave is a musical, and most of the lines are delivered either in political chanting or song format. A very risky creative choice.
Our protagonist too was victim of rape, it is soon and predictably revealed. The rapist – a popular stallion called Max – does not think he committed rape because a highly inebriated Julia did not reject his advance. From there on the film explores the familiar topics of consent, victim-blaming, public-shaming, and presumption of innocence, amongst others. The problem is that it does so with the didacticism of a nursery school teacher. The film is as intoxicated as poor Julia on the night she was violated. Ready-made quotes, one-liners and chants never go beyond the glaring obvious: “we will fight on, we will never be submissive”, “the patriarchy is dying, and we are walking to its funeral”, “get your rosaries off our ovaries”, and so on.
The music numbers are cringey. Lopez and other actors sing off-key, and can barely dance. The director is aware of his protagonist’s artistic limitations, and he opens the film with a subplot about Julia’s inability to perform in a choir. That does not save our ears from the barbaric yodelling that’s about to ensue. Not a single song is good. Not a single scene is memorable (at least not for the right reasons). The production and costume design are infantile: Julia’s permanent blood-red lipstick and mushroom hairdo take her look like a caricature, and the balaclavas that protestors wear are straight out of a primary school play,.
The Wave is so unbearable to watch that at times it feels like the director was seeking to mock the feminists, and asking viewers to side with antagonists. The only cold comfort is that the bad guys are just as annoying as the good girls and non-binary people. This is one of the biggest leaps backward and downhill (a triple-back somersault) I’ve seen in the recent career of a good filmmaker.
This Chilean film, Lelio’s ninth feature, is also a cautionary tale: don’t set out to do a musical (particularly one with a duration of more than two nows, two thirds of which consisting of such acts). unless you are confident that: 1) your actors can sing; 2) your tunes are catchy; and first and foremost 3) your script isn’t prescriptive and sermonic. You could end up doing your cause and your career a disservice.
The Wave just premiered in the 78th Festival de Cannes. Stay away at all costs.
