Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Sophie Jarvis
Starring: Grace Glowicki, Alexandra Roberts, Quelemia Sparrow, Lochlyn Munro, Antoine
DesRochers
With her feature debut Until Branches Bend, director Sophie Jarvis (working with story editors Kathleen Hepburn
and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) poses the question of what if Erin
Brockovich wasn't smart, sassy and sexy, but rather a socially awkward
introvert who struggles to hold a simple conversation with another
human, let alone take on a company. The answer is a uniquely rewarding
spin on the environmental thriller sub-genre.
Robin (Grace Glowicki) works at a cannery in rural Canada. While
her co-workers gossip and joke around her, Robin just smiles. It's clear
she has little in common with these people. One lunchtime Robin finds a
wormhole in a peach, from which emerges a strange insect. Trapping it in
a jar, she takes the bug to her boss Dennis (Lochlyn Munro), with
whom she's been having an affair. Dennis and his own superior assure
Robin that the bug is harmless, yet suspiciously request that she not
mention her discovery to anyone else.
The bug in her jar becomes a bee in Robin's bonnet, as she takes to
Google and is disturbed at its similarities to the highly invasive spear
beetle. When Robin shows a picture she took of the bug to a local
scientist, the cannery, along with the surrounding peach fields, are
shut down for investigation. With the welfare of the town under threat,
Robin becomes a pariah. At a town hall meeting Dennis claims she never
brought the bug to him, making her look unstable.
In the past, a movie like Until Branches Bend might have
opted for "strong woman" clichés and have Robin stand up to the
townsfolk and her superiors at the cannery. In recent years, with the
emergence of so many women filmmakers, we're now being treated to a much
broader range of female protagonists as women directors seize the
opportunity to portray their heroines as relatable rather than
aspirational. Robin might cruelly be described as a trainwreck, but
things seemed to be going along okay for her prior to her discovery. In
her first interaction with Dennis we see a bubbly young woman who
clearly enjoys this man's company, even if she's awfully naïve in doing
so. But there's something brittle, perhaps something undiagnosed about
Robin, and Glowicki plays the part like a dog that's been kicked by most
of the humans it has encountered. Her impatience with people hints at
Asberger's, and she's often her own worst enemy. Attempting to schedule
an abortion (it's never made clear if Dennis is the father), Robin
continually misses appointments and acts as though it's the clinic's
fault.
As Robin is ostracised by her community, and with her younger sister
Laney (Alexandra Roberts) leaving town, she retreats into a world
of obsession, tearing open peaches and scouring trees for a sight of the
bug. When she curls up on her kitchen floor surrounded by sticky peach
detritus, it's an image that recalls the closing shot of Gene Hackman
having torn apart his apartment looking for a bug of another kind in
The Conversation. Robin's instability doesn't help her cause, and you can see why some
of the townsfolk might find her claims easy to dismiss.
In some moments Jarvis takes her movie into eco-horror territory,
through jolting daydreams experienced by the increasingly mentally
ravaged Robin, and through shots of the devastation nature can cause if
it decides not to play by our enforced rules. The ostracisation of Robin
alludes to European folk-tales of strange women living on the edge of
town marked as witches. In one of the movie's final, most striking
images, Robin embraces the dark forces of nature in what looks like a
pagan coming together of elemental forces. It's as though off screen she
made some secret pact with nature, invoking a biblical revenge on the
town. Given how she's been treated, we couldn't begrudge her for doing
so.
