In 2019, Dutch filmmaker Sacha Polak made her English language debut with Dirty God, in which a young woman, played to great acclaim by newcomer Vicky Knight, had to deal with her rage while piecing her life back together following an acid attack which left her disfigured. Knight takes centre stage again in Polak’s follow up film, which also centres around both disfigurement and internalised anger.
This time around Knight plays 23-year-old Franky, a working-class woman from a troubled East End family who leads a life dedicated to caregiving, juggling her duties as a nurse while also looking after her alcoholic mother and the rest of her family. Franky herself is troubled by her own past and the blaze which left her scarred and killed her brother. However, her life takes a transformative turn when she embarks on a relationship with one of her patients, Florence (Esmé Creed-Miles), another troubled young woman who has recently tried to commit suicide. Leaving her own family behind, Franky moves in with Florence and her adoptive mother and autistic brother. Finally finding some stability and real love, Franky has a chance to start dealing with her demons.
Central to this film are some fantastic performances which really shine through in the looser, more unscripted parts of the film. It’s also beautifully shot and captivating to look at.
As the film progresses, a series of events befall Franky in which she is often a passive victim rather than an active protagonist. She and her girlfriend are attacked by her sister’s violent ex-boyfriend; her sister decides, after a vague encounter with a Muslim girl to convert to Islam; Florence’s adoptive mother is dying of cancer as Florence herself veers dangerously close to the edge of a mental collapse and treats Franky appallingly in the process. This patchwork of incidents, unfortunately, don’t quite hold together to form a coherent whole.
Indeed, the film never really settles into what it actually wants to be. A character study of Franky? Too many subplots get in the way of that. A romance? Florence and Franky’s love affair is fleeting and gets lost in other events relatively quickly. A dark thriller exploring revenge and its consequences? There is a moment when the film threatens to slide into this when Florence persuades Franky to confront what happened to her as a child with an act that could have devasting consequences. But even this explosive event is nothing more than a moment in a series of other moments, and the act and the outcome of it are, oddly, never unpacked or even really returned to.
The film also suffers from a very British indie film habit of taking itself a tad too seriously and falling into some tried and tested British indie movie cliches in the process, such as those endless scenes of people staring out of windows as they ponder the sorry state of their life. There are some occasional moments of levity, but generally this is a humourless affair.
It’s a shame because Knight really does deliver a fantastic performance grounded in realism, perhaps because the story is partly based on her own life experience. But great acting alone wasn’t enough to sustain my interest in this often one-note movie.
Silver Haze is showing as part of the BFI’s Flare Film festival (13 – 24 March) and is then on general release from 29 March
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