September Says
The wife of Yorgos Lanthimos makes her adventurous directorial debut with a tale of sisterly bonding.
Pascale Kann
Image courtesy of Mubi.
The actress Ariane Labed is French but she was born in Athens and Greek connections could not have been more significant in her career. Her award-winning acting debut was the leading role in the Greek drama Attenberg made by Athena Rachel Tsangari and the following year, 2011, she appeared in Alps, the first of two which found her working with the most famous of contemporary Greek directors, Yorgos Lanthimos, whom she married in 2013. Coming to the fore in that context means that Labed remains associated with what became known as the Greek Weird Wave and now that she has turned director her choice of subject matter echoes that. Following on from a prize-winning short film, 2019’s Olla, Labed now offers us her first feature as writer and director and for this she has chosen to adapt Daisy Johnson’s novel Sisters which appeared in 2020. Although the main setting in the novel was Yorkshire and has been switched to Ireland for this film version, the family tale told is sufficiently bizarre and disturbing for September Says to come across as a movie that has distinct links to the films in which Labed first appeared regardless of the fact that the location means that the piece is played in English.
Labed begins September Says with a short prologue in which we see a mother, Sheela (Rakhee Thakrar), taking photographs of her two young daughters. Named for the months in which they were born, September (Pascale Kann) is the older with July (Mia Tharia) ten months younger. However, their bond is close enough to remind one of twins and indeed the first unsettling note struck in the film stems from the fact that the girls are being photographed to resemble the twins in Stanley Kubrick’s sinister film The Shining. But very quickly the film moves forward and we see them as teenagers living with Sheela (their father has died) and attending a local school. This is in Oxford but the various glimpses we get of the girls in school reveal that the other children regard them as strange to the extent that July in particular is subjected to bullying. Angered by this, September lashes out but ends up being blamed. But it is when July acts foolishly being led astray by the notion that a boy in her class is attracted to her that things get really out of hand. Just how far is not fully revealed at this stage, but it is enough for Sheela to retreat to Ireland and to settle in a house there that had belonged to the girls’ paternal grandfather and we see the three of them taking up residence in it.
The film is extremely well photographed throughout by Balthazar Lab and the move to Ireland sees a change in the look of the film but the widescreen images that now appear do not mean that the mood is lightened. On the contrary, the more we see of the girls responding to each other the more the games in which they indulge become worrying. Initially we get the impression that September is showing affection by assuring July that she will always protect her but in taking control September's actions suggest a desire to dominate her sister. The film’s title echoes the game of Simon Says in which commands have to be obeyed and the things that September requires July to do become ever more disconcerting. When a knife figures in it, the first time it involves July in engraving a name on a window pane (a scene which is made to grate by featuring the sound of the knife) but the next time it is an order that July should cut herself.
The greatest achievement in September Says lies in the fact that the strange shared behaviour of the girls should feel compellingly real. The intense inner closeness and September's need to dominate co-exist in the fully realised performances by Pascale Kann and Mia Tharia and then enter a new phase when September is resentful over July being the one who loses her virginity after meeting a farmer’s son named John (Cal O’Driscoll). That this central relationship is so persuasively presented is crucial to the film’s impact because the story is developed in bits and pieces which can render events enigmatic and fail to indicate where the story is heading. Including a scene in which Sheela brings home a man whom she has met in a pub and then letting us hear her actual thoughts when we see them in bed together is an odd diversion and it is she who in another weird episode sees two lemurs in the kitchen sink.
That September Says is a strange work is beyond doubt and, while its later stages do involve twists and revelations, the film is unlikely to appeal to those who like clear-cut tales. Indeed, I suspect that interpretations of the film will vary and that it will please most who like to discuss afterwards how best to read a film. Nevertheless, Labed can feel some sense of achievement here, not only because of the skilled presentation of the two central characters but on account of her visual styling proving consistently interesting. Her work may carry echoes of Lanthimos and the Greek Weird Wave but hers is a distinctive directorial eye.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Mia Tharia, Pascale Kann, Rakhee Thakrar, Cal O’Driscoll, Shane Connellan, Barry John Kinsella, Maeron Libomi, Rebecca Whelan, Shane Toner, Sophia Lennona, Justin Daniel Anene, Saoirse Flynn.
Dir Ariane Labed, Pro Chelsea Morgan Hoffmann, Lara Hickey, Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe, Screenplay Ariane Labed, from the novel Sisters by Daisy Johnson, Ph Balthazar Lab, Pro Des Lauren Kelly, Ed Bettina Böhler, Music Johnnie Burn, Costumes Saileóg O’Halloran.
BBC Film/Screen Ireland/Eurimages/Cry Baby Ltd./Sackville Film and Television Productions/Element Films-Mubi.
95 mins. Ireland/UK/Germany/France/USA. 2024. UK Rel: 21 February 2025. Cert. 18.
