Pearl

Director: Ti West (Canada, New Zealand, USA). Year of Release: 2022

1919. A young woman is trying on an old dress of her mother. As she is admiring herself in the mirror, the mother storms in the room, and starts shouting at her in German. Take off that dress, put some proper clothes on, and go and feed the animals. It’s not too long before she’s wearing dungarees in the barn and chatting to the animals. Before the opening credits roll, we’ve already experienced a goosicide and some alligator antics.

Before we get into the serious stuff, can I just say how weird it is sitting in a cinema in Berlin, and the first words that you hear are German, with impeccable English subtitles? Cinemas here often show English language films with German synchronisation, with or without subtitles, so I doubt I was the only one who briefly wondered whether he was in the right screening. But no, Pearl’s mother is an actual German who speaks to her daughter in a mixture of languages and moods.

Although Pearl looks and acts like a teenage girl, and has a certain naivety, she is already married. Her husband, Howard, is away fighting in Europe. Every day, Pearl searches the post, usually unsuccessfully, for letters from the Western Front. She both loves and resents her husband. The resentment comes partly because he has deserted her, but she also envies the fact that he has managed to leave their one horse town in the rural Southern States.

The Spanish flu is raging, and everyone wears white masks in public (nothing new there). Pearl’s already protective mother is scared that if her daughter has any connection with the outside world, she will pick up an illness, and pass it on to everyone at home, most notably her wheelchair-bound father who has already lost the power of speech. Mum is also worried that, as the daughter of German immigrants with the war still not over, she may gain unwanted hostile attention.

Pearl is allowed to go to town to pick up dad’s medicine, which she swigs to dull the internal pain. She sees an avenue of escape in the local cinema. Defying her mother’s orders, she uses the change from her father’s medicine to go to the film Palace Follies, starring dancers who have managed to escape home. After the film is over, the nameless projectionist, with a Clark Gable moustache and Brylcreemed hair offers Pearl a cigarette and invites her into his booth.

On her way home from the cinema, the snippet of film which the projectionist has given Pearl flies off. She follows it into a field, where the stalks of corn are taller than her. This leads her to a scarecrow with which she first dances, then steals its hat, and finally dry humps in the field. The fact that until now Pearl has behaved so innocently, and has already resisted the projectionist’s advances because she is a married woman, gives this scene of sublimated lust even more impact.

Pearl is in permanent conflict with her Puritan, humourless mother, who is every inch a German stereotype, although we understand perfectly why she does what she does. Pearl, however, is a young girl who wants her freedom. She has a need to escape, so when her sister-in-law Mitsy tells her that they’re having dancing trials at the local church, and the winner will gets to tour the country, Pearl must go, saying: “the whole world is going to know my name”.

Without telling her mother, Pearl and Mitsy secretly attend the audition. Looking at the queue of hopefuls, Mitsy says that if she doesn’t win the gig, she hopes that Pearl will. Pearl’s eye contains a much more demonic glint. She insists that she, not Mitsy, will win. When the people organising the audition tell her that they are looking for something different – more blonde and All-American (that is, more Mitsy), you get the feeling that something inside Pearl has just snapped.

All the reviews say that the film shows a young woman’s gradual descent into madness. Well yes, but what we view is much more nuanced than in many films with a similar plot. Pearl’s mental unravelling is not typical Hollywood scenery chewing, like Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys or Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Instead, Mia Goth’s performance as Pearl is much more subtle. For most of the time, she doesn’t seem troubled at all. Until the moment when she picks up a pitchfork.

Pearl is a prequel to X, also released last year. Whereas I found X watchable but unstructured, Pearl is filmed much more tightly, and Goth revels in her opportunity to take centre stage. There is a certain continuity in that Pearl also appeared as an old woman in X, which was set 60 years later. But this is a self-standing film which works in its own right. Watching Pearl may help you to understand X a little better, but you don’t need to see X to appreciate Pearl.

Pearl works so well because it’s 1950s optimistic demeanour contrasts so well with its story of exclusion and despair. It looks happy while obviously hiding a deeper pain. In the final scene, Goth smiles endlessly as the camera refuses to leave her face. But throughout the film, she is at the same time believable, innocent, and slightly scary. You understand why Pearl reacts against her oppressive upbringing, without once feeling that she is behaving with any degree of rationality.

Pearl, co-written by Goth, is a horror film which is rarely scary, except at the moments when it really needs to be. It carries a female sensitivity so that when the projectionist shows Pearl some Stag reels – early porn, that he picked up while fighting in France – and says he’d like to see her in one, this has a feeling of being really creepy, rather than just voyeuristic. It sometimes feels insubstantial, but has a lot to say. It is a film which stays with you long after you’ve seen it.

Highly recommended,