Dorothy

Starring: Carice Van Houten, Jenn Murray, Gary Lewis

Synopsis:

A tiny remote and isolated Island community off the coast of Ireland is shocked when a young girl babysitting for a family friend suddenly attacks the baby nearly killing it. She is arrested for attempted murder and bailed. Court appointed Psychiatrist Jane Van Dopp travels to the Island to carry out the preliminary assessment on the girl Dorothy.

It turns out that the tiny Island community are incredibly hostile to any outside influence, her attempts to interview Dorothy and any witnesses or acquaintances are met with surliness or open aggression. The Island’s Law Enforcement Officer (Garda, as it’s in the Republic of Ireland) is the only supportive, indeed only vaguely normal seeming human being.

As Jane’s investigation progresses and Dorothy maintains very convincingly that she was not there and did not commit any crime, Jane works on the theory of Multiple Personality Disorder, but tensions mount on the Island, strange things begin to happen raising tensions unbearably, old feuds bubble over into acts of horrific violence and what is that noise coming from the hotel room above Jane’s...?

Atmospheric from the start, this vaguely uncomfortable supernatural drama tells its story smoothly and skilfully. The story is told in flashback as Jane converses with her colleague in the Hospital on the mainland, and we see her in memory travelling across a difficult grey sea to a freezing windswept and muddy dump of an island, it’s hard to pinpoint when the story is set but roughly contemporary -not that that matters in this place. The film makers have gone to great lengths to create a world utterly isolated from the here and now, The Island remains unnamed throughout to add to our sense of isolation, and the people who live there live lives of hard work and devout Christianity.

Most of the time anyway, the squat dull little church where they sit and listen to Pastor Ross (A brilliant Gary Lewis) Preaching old testament harshness on Sundays is their public faith, but later a Bonfire at midnight near a derelict farm sees Islanders dancing to fiddle music and wearing animal masks in a very pagan looking rave.

Thoughts of the Wicker Man and Straw Dogs are pretty hard to avoid from here on in, deliberately. The strength of belief and the unease about what exactly the community believes in, keeps you guessing for quite a while. Although, by that point it has to be said things have already got very grim indeed for our heroine.

Carice Van Outen plays it brilliantly. Her placid unruffled Psychiatrist, so calm and collected is a pleasure to watch against the rough angry islanders, and especially the fragile, twitching Dorothy (Excellently played by Jenn Murray with unnerving eyes in her pale face and ‘Village of the Damned’ hairstyle) Even more impressive to see is Van Outen’s character Jane gradually losing her balance and objectivity when the questions pile up and the answers are just not rational.

Agnes Merlet has directed an intriguing and deliciously dark supernatural drama, yet every scene is economically played out and there is a sense of it all being tightly reined in and meticulously acted and directed, lots of chances for action to be overdone, or people to ham it up are just not allowed and in my opinion it has worked beautifully.

Murray has the joy of playing about five different people and she does so very, very well. Without a tight grip on things that’s the sort of situation that could go over the top and wreck a lot of effort, as can be seen in similar dramas of the same genre.

Verdict:

Dorothy is a well made drama which shows that special effects are no substitute for Directorial skill and talented acting, oh and a well crafted script. It was also pleasing to be genuinely caught out by a couple of twists which I just did not see coming.

7 out of 10 (Sulaco)

Read MikeOutWest's review of Dorothy, here.