The Wonder

Florence Pugh excels yet again in an adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel about a girl who stops eating without any apparent harm to her health.

Nil by mouth: Kíla Lord Cassidy, Tom Burke and Florence Pugh

Regardless of the character she chooses to inhabit, Florence Pugh makes her a reason to watch. Age, and even gender, might seem immaterial to Ms Pugh’s requirements, so long as she, her character, is grounded, complex and real. Having knocked the socks off her co-stars in Don’t Worry Darling – as an arguably paranoid 1950s’ American housewife – Pugh pulls on her petticoats once more to play a nurse recently returned from the Crimean war. She is Elizabeth Wright, a young widow who has been called to the wilds of Ireland to investigate a spiritual phenomenon, a true wonder.

Here, Pugh is reunited with the scenarist Alice Birch, who scripted Lady Macbeth, in which the actress excelled as a rebellious wife in 1860s’ Northumberland. Like the latter, The Wonder, co-written with Emma Donoghue and Sebastián Lelio (from the former’s novel), is devoid of narrative clutter. This is a minimalist piece in which the painterly interiors and heather-flecked, windswept moors provide more than enough visual conversation. The Wonder is a drama to bask in, as the nuanced layers of culture and history – and theology – come together to explain the curious turn of events.

It is the 1860s (again) and the eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell (Kíla Lord Cassidy, daughter of Elaine Cassidy) has not eaten for four months, yet appears to be in the full bloom of health. Her spiritual endeavour has caught the attention of the church, the scientific body and even the London press, with a chap from The Telegraph (Tom Burke) dispatched forthwith. The local doctor (Toby Jones) is gamely peering outside of the box, suggesting that other forces may be at play, such as a magnetic property or a case of photosynthesis, with the girl inadvertently absorbing energy from the sun. Elizabeth Wright is more pragmatic.

All this is beautifully unfolded by the Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio, who has become one of the world’s leading directors of women, following his striking female-centric vehicles Gloria, A Fantastic Woman, Disobedience and Gloria Bell. Here, the male characters are mere satellites to the main action, which is comprised of Elizabeth Wright, Anna, her mother Rosaleen (Elaine Cassidy) and a nun (Josie Walker), the latter who shares a round-the-clock vigil with Elizabeth to ensure that the girl is not sneaking any snacks. And then there is Niamh Algar as our narrator, who speaks directly to the camera. This latter conceit feels a step to far, with the film opening on a studio set, before slipping into more naturalistic territory. “Hello,” starts Algar. “This is the beginning. The beginning of a film called The Wonder. The characters believe in their stories with complete conviction. We are nothing without stories. And so we invite you to believe in this one.” We might have believed more without such artifice, a gimmick that sparks alarming memories of Dogville and Joe Wright’s theatrical version of Anna Karenina. And it takes all of Florence Pugh’s thespian powers to draw us back into the drama. But, boy, is she good, and Lelio provides her with a magnificent stage on which to smoulder, with a haunting ambient score from Matthew Herbert. It is a glorious painting of a bygone era, when science was making inroads into religion and when vulnerable young women were still willing to sacrifice themselves for a sacred ideal.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Florence Pugh, Tom Burke, Niamh Algar, Elaine Cassidy, Dermot Crowley, Brían F. O'Byrne, David Wilmot, Ruth Bradley, Caolán Byrne, Josie Walker, Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones, Kíla Lord Cassidy. 

Dir Sebastián Lelio, Pro Ed Guiney, Tessa Ross, Andrew Lowe and Juliette Howell, Screenplay Emma Donoghue, Sebastián Lelio and Alice Birch, from the novel by Emma Donoghue, Ph Ari Wegner, Pro Des Grant Montgomery, Ed Kristina Hetherington, Music Matthew Herbert, Costumes Odile Dicks-Mireaux, Sound Ben Baird, Dialect coach Poll Moussoulides. 

House Productions/Element Pictures/Screen Ireland-Netflix.
108 mins. Ireland/UK/USA. 2022. UK and US Rel: 16 November 2022. Cert. 15.