3.5 stars (out of 5)
Norwegian co-writer/director Erik Poppe’s first film in English is vaguely awkward around the edges, but offers images that prove hard to shake and one of Juliette Binoche’s best ever performances as a character who could drive you crazy.
Rebecca (JB) is a war photographer (one of the five best, apparently), and she’s introduced watching a group of Kabul women preparing one of their number for a suicide bombing. Binoche makes it clear that Rebecca is at once terrified, excited and weirdly distanced, and when she’s severely injured and must return home to her family in the Irish countryside she enters another battlefield entirely. Her husband Marcus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from, duh, Game Of Thrones) is angry at her for continually endangering her life, and her two daughters, but especially teen Steph (striking first-timer Lauryn Canny), can no longer bear to have a mother whom they expect, over and over, to wind up dead. And this strong but familiar second act is hindered slightly by Coster-Waldau’s underdeveloped, sullen characterisation, but Poppe then opens a whole new can of worms when Rebecca, despite having promised she’s giving up her hazardous profession, agrees to go somewhere ‘safe’, and with conditions. As if, somehow, that’s going to make any difference.
Reportedly drawn from some of the director’s own personal experiences, this has tough supporting players (Orphan Black’s Maria Doyle Kennedy, the fine Canny and even U2’s Larry Mullen Jr in a small role), but is really all about Binoche as a woman whose noble principles and political anger might prove her ruin. And obviously intrigued by Rebecca and trying to work out what makes her tick, Juliette is quite brilliant here, and certainly isn’t afraid to make this protagonist irresponsible, unpredictable and unlikeable. Oh, and she looks lovely in a hijab.
I Wake Up Screening 