MIFF Session 3: WENDY

A diner in America. It's busy but happy, run just the right side of chaos. A few kids at the counter chow down and talk about what they want to be. One of the co owners overhears one say he wants to be a pirate and she jovially shuts him down by telling him he'll just be a bucket and mop guy. The boy reacts against this hard but the mockery ends in a faux sword fight between the two owners (a pair of sisters) and things seem to settle. That night one of the girls, Wendy wakes as another train passes by and rattles the walls of the house. She goes to the window and sees a strange little boy with dreadlocks running on the roofs of the cars. She wakes her brothers. They chase the train and join the boy, Peter, get pushed into a river, climb aboard a rowboat and reach a volcanic island where no one gets old.

This magical realist take on Peter Pan pushes forward the refulgent wonder of childhood imagination, adding a Lord of the Flies overlay to it so to avoid cuteness. Most of the cast are under twelve. The kids have a great time at first, even meeting the glowing light-squid Peter calls Mother in one of the most beautiful scenes I've witnessed in a new film for a fair few years. But things, as they must, sour. Coming upon an old man with a donkey, she watches as he makes his way across a barren landscape. He is revealed to be Buzzo, a young boy only a short time before. Other signs and manifestations appear that tell the kids they won't be young forever and they set out to correct it.

Behn Zeitlin's first feature Beasts of the Southern Wild delighted with the same expert expression of a child's mind and the way the world appears to them. At one point the six year old Hushpuppy sees her father collapse in a seizure. Storm clouds roar with thunder and a thick gale rises. It's a convincing explanation of how a child might take such a catastrophic sight. This continues in Wendy but more constantly as even the parental figures are erased from the scene and the kids must cope within the limits of their understanding but the scope of their imagination.

As with Beasts, despite some extraordinary setpieces in the bookending acts, the middle act gets draggy and repetitive. Roles and motivations blur and what might be an engaging adventure plot that still served the aesthetic and mood is lost in what feels like fading definition. Devin France in the title role glows at the centre of her every scene and newcomer Yashua Jack adds great force as Peter and it does wrap into a conclusion and final sequence that are very hearty but I still felt like I'd missed out on the fun.


Another in the set of limited window viewings that this online MIFF is featuring. This still annoys me.