Venice Film Festival 2022: ‘Pearl’ Review
Stars: Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, Emma Jenkins-Purro | Written by Ti West, Mia Goth | Directed by Ti West
Mia Goth reprises her role as Pearl in Ti West’s prequel to this year’s X, co-written with Goth while on lockdown during production, and shot on the same New Zealand locations. Combining a fabulous visual aesthetic with a delightfully unhinged central performance and some spectacular gore moments, this is an unabashed genre treat that’s full of surprises.
Pearl takes place in 1918, some 60 years before the events of X, in which the members of a porn shoot at a remote farmhouse were menaced by a horny old lady (Goth, unrecognisable in state-of-the-art prosthetic old-age make-up). As the rest of the world deals with the tail end of WWI and the global outbreak of Spanish Flu (a clever way of evoking Covid, while also addressing the reality of a lockdown shoot), 20-something Pearl (Goth) is forced to work on her family farm, where her duties include looking after her severely debilitated father (Matthew Sunderland) under the watchful eye of her German immigrant mother, Ruth (Tandi Wright) while she waits for her husband Howard (Alistair Sewell) to return from overseas.
When she’s not casually mutilating farm animals and feeding them to her hungry pet alligator Theda (named after movie star Theda Bara), Pearl dreams of making it as a dancer on the silver screen, encouraged by a local projectionist (David Corenswet), who takes a fancy to her. When her pretty blonde sister-in-law Mitzy (Emma Jenkins-Purro) informs her of an upcoming local dance troupe audition, Pearl jumps at the chance, but unfortunately for everyone concerned, she doesn’t take too kindly to rejection.
After pulling double duty in X as both Pearl and debuting porn star Maxine, Goth is terrific as the younger-but-still-just-as-lustful version of her monstrous antagonist. The trick this time round is that she manages to evoke a surprising level of sympathy for Pearl, even when she eventually tips into proper psycho territory – the sequence where she describes how she doesn’t think she’s like other people is genuinely heart-breaking.
The film’s most inspired touch is its gloriously heightened colour palette, which deliberately evokes The Wizard of Oz in all its Technicolour glory. To that end, as Pearl twirls around the farm, you’re constantly expecting her to burst into song, rather than stick a pitchfork in some unsuspecting farm animal or human.
In addition, West has a keen eye for an arresting visual image – most notably a sumptuous-looking joint of pork that Ruth refuses out of pride (and fear of the Flu), which is left to rot on the porch throughout the movie, before playing a key part towards the end. West also has a great sense of pace and escalation, with the gore, tension and violence all ramping up considerably as the film enters its final act.
However, what really comes across is the infectious sense of fun in the filmmaking, as if West and Goth just decided that no idea was too crazy during lockdown and that they’d just have as much demented fun as possible. Consequently, the film is full of delightful surprises, all of which is would be churlish to reveal here. Suffice it to say that highlights include a wonderfully deranged nod to The Wizard of Oz, some jaw-dropping archive footage and an audition sequence that will have you grinning from ear to ear.
Finally, it’s worth pointing out that while the locations and characters mean there are obvious connections to X, the film works perfectly well as a stand-alone movie. So if you haven’t seen X, don’t let that put you off seeing Pearl, as you’d be missing out on one of the horror highlights of the year. Here’s hoping West and Goth get to make the planned third film in the trilogy.
**** 4/5
Pearl screened as part of this year’s Venice Film Festival.
