Ariane Labed is one of the leading lights of the Greek weird wave. The French star of Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg and the earlier, grittier satires of Yorgos Lanthimos (to whom she has been married since 2013) made an impressive directorial debut in 2019 with Olla, a short absurdist comedy about a mail-order bride.
The drollery and quirky styling choices that underpinned that pleasing doodle are sadly absent from this miserable adaptation of Daisy Johnson’s novel Sisters.
Stranded somewhere between sexual awakening, schoolyard persecution tragedy and coming of age, September Says appears to be partially set in some AI-generated version of Ireland. It looks vaguely like our country, and the accents are fine, yet there’s something oddly misshapen about the view, like one of those computer-generated art fails in which everyone has the wrong number of arms.
July (Mia Tharia) and September (Pascale Kann) are creepily inseparable teen siblings who live in a neurodiverse bubble, making animal sounds, refusing to shave their armpits and facing the wrath of bullies at school. And then the family go to their Irish holiday home.
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September is the dominant sister, issuing edicts through the game of the title, dares that include chugging booze and declarations of fealty. “If I lost a leg, would you get yours amputated too?” she asks July, knowing the answer is “yes”.
In a narrative swerve, their single mother (Rakhee Thakrar), an inexplicably glamorous photographer, takes the reins with an internal monologue describing a sexual pick-up from a local pub.
Labed generates palpable dread, powered along by the unsettling sound design of Johnnie Burn (The Zone of Interest), Saileóg O’Halloran’s costumes and Balthazar Lab’s muddy cinematography. Tharia, Thakrar and Kann provide a triumvirate of powerful performances. The details and atmospherics are diverting. The blindingly obvious plot twist is less impressive.
In cinemas from Friday, February 21st
