We are always afraid to see the actors disappear in their superhero tights. The show of Florence Pugh (a citizen of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since taking on the role of Yelena Belova in Black Widowin 2021) deploying all his power of expression in an ambitious and complex role is reason enough to recommend the vision of The Wonder, the eighth feature film by Chilean director Sebastian Lelio, which Netflix releases on November 16. It’s not the only one. Located in Ireland, in the aftermath of the Great Famine, The Wonder ventures on the border between belief and madness, relentlessly questioning its characters and its spectators.
The film’s prologue takes place in a film studio, where we discover the first set of the film, a boat cabin, a way of inviting us to travel in the company of Lib Wright (Florence Pugh), an English nurse who served for the Crimean War alongside Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), historical figure and pioneer of modern nursing. She left London on a wintry day in 1862, the gaslights and the railways for the muddy paths of the interior of Ireland.
In a small village, awaits Anna O’Donnell (Kila Lord Cassidy), a teenager who claims not to have eaten for months and to subsist by divine grace. Lib Wright was asked by local notables to establish whether or not Anna’s survival was miraculous. The parish priest (Ciaran Hinds) and the doctor (Toby Jones) would like to believe it, one for the glory of the Catholic Church, the other because he would have discovered a new phenomenon.
Mystical paroxysms
The story, adapted from a novel by Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown and Company, 2016, untranslated) by the author, playwright Alice Birch and Lelio, intertwines these power struggles and the increasingly close relationship that unites Lib Wright and Anna O’Donnell. Florence Pugh, at first purely impressive, lets herself be carried away by the flood of collective suffering (the Great Famine, whose wounds are still fresh) and private (the secrets of the O’Donnell family) until she abandons her rigor scientific.
Between the brilliant young woman, kept in a subordinate position by the rules of Victorian society, and the adolescent prey to mystical paroxysms (whom the young Kila Lord Cassidy embodies with infinite delicacy), the abyss gradually fills up. little over beautiful meditative sequences, which often take the form of slow journeys on the paths that crisscross the Irish moors.
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