Sundance 2021 Review: Violation – “Best performance, Worst film”

Violation (2020) is a revenge picture. It was co-written and co-directed by Dusty Mancinelli, and Madeline Sims-Fewer.

Miriam (Madeline Sims-Fewer), and Caleb (Obi Abili) are a couple. Greta (Anna Maguire) and Dylan (Jesse LaVercombe) are also a couple. Together, the four are on a couples weekend on a lake somewhere in Canada. Greta and Dylan seem to be very much in love with one another. Miriam and Caleb on the other hand seem to be heading towards splitsville. Their relationship is a stagnant, sexless one. Whereas Greta and Dylan can’t keep their hands off each other.

Miriam and Greta have been friends since childhood. Miriam has a history of trying to intervene in Greta’s affairs whenever she felt that Greta was getting a raw deal from someone. This subject, and many others become topics of discussion between the friendly foursome throughout the weekend.

One night, Greta and Caleb have both retired to bed, independent of one another, leaving Miriam and Dylan at hearth’s edge to chat into the night. As the evening wanes, the conversation winds its way to more intimate and personal details. Miriam confesses of her relationship woes to Dylan, around whom she feels completely at ease.

Suddenly, in a moment of tender vulnerability, Miriam kisses Dylan. The romantic interlude does not last long however, for both Miriam and Dylan quickly realize the morally questionable nature of their faux-pas. Neither one seems too put out by this seemingly innocent offense, and the two continue to converse into the wee hours, eventually both of them passing out by the fire. The next morning, Dylan, for reasons unknown to anyone but him, rapes Miriam. The rest of the film focuses on Miriam. Her reaction, her decisions, her emotional trauma, and the way she processes things.

Boy, do I know how to pick em, or what? I am one million billion percent the wrong person to review this movie. There was a Q&A following the film that included both Dusty Mancinelli, and Madeline Sims-Fewer. I listened to them talk about their film immediately after watching it. They both told powerful stories of how they were survivors of abuse, and how that was how they made an artistic connection. They talked about wanting to make a film that focused on post-traumatic stress disorder, and how someone copes with it.

As artistic goals, these are great. Unfortunately, I had a lot of problems with this movie. But now I feel like an absolute shitheel, because I can’t get the idea out of my mind that somehow criticizing their movie is akin to shaming them for their abuse. And like, I am not trying to fuck with any of that. I’m just here to watch a movie and tell you if it was good or not. I’m not here to gatekeep someone’s therapy or recovery.

I mentioned this to my brother, as he also saw the film. He said I was an idiot, and that I shouldn’t let the personal motivations of the filmmakers get in the way of critiquing the way they told their story. He told me to stop being a moron, slapped me with his hat, and he walked out the door.

So I just want to get it out there, that this isn’t personal, it’s strictly business. Anything I say has nothing to do with anything anyone is going through or had gone through or the way in which these things are or might be dealt with. If you think you might not like the things I say, feel free to bail out now. Also, no more Q&A sessions for me until after I write my damn review.

Violation is a head-shaking exercise in frustration. Every decision Miriam makes in the film is awful. She makes the worst decision every time she has a decision to make. Now, in the Q&A, the filmmaker’s acknowledged this. They said that’s what they wanted, and that Miriam is supposed to be an anti-hero. The thing is, you’ve got to give me a reason to have some kind of investment in this character. When Miriam chooses to commit an act of retribution that is as reprehensible, if not more so, than the act that was committed upon her, it’s hard to remain in her corner.

Unless this is a horror film? Despite the appearance of the Shudder logo at the beginning of the film, I did not consider Violation to be a horror film. Horrific incidents occur, but a horror film this ain’t. Which is probably a good thing because my opinion of would be worse if it was supposed to be a horror film.

Back to Miriam. Following her first bad decision, Miriam continues to double down on poor choices at every opportunity, until I was absolutely washing my hands of her. Once she lost me, the film was an absolute slog. There really isn’t much story to tell, so a lot of time is spent in the cabin by the lake, where we listen to a lot of conversation between a quartet of people we either don’t like, or don’t care about either way because they haven’t been developed very well as characters, because they are nothing more than a means to an end for Miriam to go through what Miriam has to go through. That was a long sentence.

To make up for what it lacks in terms of story, Violation employs the gimmick of non-linear storytelling to throw you off the trail. The hope is that you will be distracted enough by your desire to know why certain things are happening, that you won’t notice how thin the story is. This too causes frustration. When I watch a film, I am placing myself in the hands of the filmmaker, trusting that because I am allowing them to take me wherever it is they want to take me, that in the end it will be worth it. Of course, there are varying degrees of success, but the end of the Violation journey was a profound disappointment.

A significant component of the disappointment was how the world in which this film takes place is one in which no rules of reality apply. I am not looking for a police procedural here, but at some point, when none of the rules of real life apply to your story, it is going to become less and less believable. I know the focus is supposed to be on Miriam’s shell shock, but the story becomes fantastical enough to diminish that focus. There have got to be some rules.

When it comes to the chronology of the film, things get a little sloppy towards the end, courtesy of the non-linear editing. Maybe it was all made clear at some point. I did not miss the clues the filmmakers put in there to denote a time shift without the use of some kind of intertitle. I was definitely paying attention too, so by the time we got far enough into the film, I started having questions about the timeline of events, which further eroded the credibility of this story.

Here’s something else that shits me up. I read a couple quick review snippets of this flick in my research for this review, and much ado is being made about the cinematography. I’m sorry to say that those reviewers are wrong. The cinematography is terrible.

There seems to be a breed of filmmakers that insist on shooting a ton of these super extreme closeups. Good Time (The Safdie Brothers, 2018), and Mother of George (Andrew Dosumnu, 2013) did this. For some reason, people flipped about the cinematography. Why? Why don’t you want to see the movie? You’ve paid to see the movie. Don’t you want to see it? Take your camera and back the fuck up and let me see the scene. Shooting your subjects on a molecular level isn’t making the scene more visceral or adding any tension or impact. It’s just annoying.

A lot of people like this kind of camerawork I guess, but for me, cinema is a visual medium. I need to see it. That’s the amazing thing about a camera. You can point it at things, and take pictures of them. So anyone can see them. Anyone, anywhere. It’s great! I did not understand the insistence of burying the camera up everyone’s nose constantly. The film is loaded with super extreme closeups that constantly move in and out of focus, thanks to way too much completely unnecessary handheld camera work. It made me want to punch my TV. Honestly, the cinematography was so maddening, it was probably the worst thing about this movie.

While I was totally frustrated with this movie by the time I finished it, it wasn’t all bad, and I’d like to end on a high note. For all of the stuff I didn’t like, I found the performances to be amazing. Anna Maguire really makes the insecurity bubble under her defiant exterior wonderfully. Obi Obili doesn’t have a very large role, but he holds it down the entire time. Jesse LaVercombe really sells the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing thing, and is totally believable. He also has a nice looking penis that he somehow managed to keep hard throughout what must have been hours of shooting. Much respect to Jesse.

But the movie belongs to Madeline Sims-Fewer, who, for the entire film, is conducting a seminar on powerful acting. She is incredible in her role. I don’t want to call this thing a one-woman-show, but Sims-Fewer has the largest chunk of the script, and she nails every second of it. Truly remarkable. I don’t know what acting school she subscribes to, or what her process is. Whatever it is, she must have been channeling the abuse she was talking about in the Q&A or something, because she fuckin’ kills it.

So there you have it. Violation. No sir, I didn’t like it. But did it have what was likely the greatest performance at Sundance 2021? Definitely. At least, of all the films I watched. And there were some great ones! This film will likely be lauded by critics and consumers the world over. Which is fine. If the things that bothered me don’t bother you, I think that’s awesome. For me, Violation, while containing what was likely the best performance of the festival, was one of the worst films overall in my Sundance 2021 experience.

P.S. There were couple of interesting similarities at Sundance 2021. Pleasure and Violation both featured naked guys jerking off. Like fully on screen. I’m not hating, I’m just saying you just don’t see it very often. To be honest it was actually, on paper, kind of a refreshing change. I’ve never really understood why schwanz on screen has always been taboo, but women can put it all on the glass, and the crowd roars. Way to score one for the other team, ladies! I will admit, I love witnessing a theater full of people turn on a film if a guy’s dick appears on screen. Unless the theater is strictly arthouse, it happens every time. In another fun coincidence, both Violation and The Blazing World starred women who also wrote and directed their own films, and who were both excellent in their roles. I just thought that was interesting and wanted to share it.