Walking into a film without knowing anything about it can be
exhilarating as well as nervous experience. The latter as you don’t want to
feel like you wasted your time and the former as the story could be literally
anything. Over the course of LFF I tried to just walk into as many film like
this as possible. But unlike all the others, I ended up having to wait 90
minutes standing in a queue for ‘Earthquake Bird’, delayed due to technical
issues in the screen so my experience of this film was already soured. Had I
not had to wait all that time, my feet killing me, I think I would have felt
differently as I don’t think that wait was worth it.
Lucy Fly has been living in Tokyo for 5 years having left her home
country Sweden under mysterious circumstances. She is called in for questioning
by police in connection with the disappearance of Lily Bridges, an American
friend of hers. In flashbacks, Lucy begins a relationship with Teiji, an introverted
and rather solemn photographer. She is also introduced to Lily by a friend who
asks her to show her the city. They become tentative friends but when Lily
meets Teiji, things start to unravel for Lucy.
Set up as a thriller and with a
sense of dread from the beginning as Lucy returns to work after a period of time,
we aren’t aware for the reason why at the start, it’s obvious Lucy is hiding
something. At first the story seems to be about where Lily is and what happened
but the film ever so slowly changes into a character breakdown and the workings
of an obsessive relationship between Lucy and Teiji. The former can’t stop thinking
about him and doesn’t want to be without him, believing that he is the only
person who understands and sees her. While the latter wants to take photographs
of her all the time and at first never wants to leave his apartment with her.
He likes to make her jealous by giving his attention to Lily and barely touches
her in public, not even holding her hand. It goes from romantic to incredible
creepy and frustrating all one moment, eventually morphing into a toxic atmosphere
which makes him unfeeling and her paranoid.
This paranoia Lucy goes through isn’t helped by the later constant
presence of Lily who is essentially an attention seeker, wanting what she shouldn’t
have, controlling those around her. Appearing harmless and friendly, she subtly
manages to get Lucy wrapped round her finger as she has does with previous ‘friends’.
Lily is a threat but Lucy is made to feel as if she’s going crazy, especially
as Teiji is next to useless in this matter. Ultimately, it’s difficult to connect
with any of the characters and feel any sympathy for them which is a shame in
Lucy’s case as she is guide to the story in the flashbacks and the present. The
only time you can feel anything for Lucy is rage when it is finally revealed
she has been betrayed. You can feel her pain blazing from the screen, this is
mostly due to Alicia Vikander’s beyond brilliant performance. She impresses in this
bilingual role, immersing herself into life in Japan, nearly blending into the
background in her bland clothing. She doesn’t wish to be seen but is by Teiji,
played by Naoki Kobayashi as the soulful artist and at the same time an
intimidating presence.
A slightly supernatural element is woven into the story that also
doubles as part of Lucy’s mysterious history, her belief that death follows her,
with a few unfortunate examples in the film to prove this theory adds to the film’s
slow burning thriller elements. Aside from brilliant performances from Vikander
and Kobayashi, the story steadily takes a nosedive, especially the conclusion
of the film which just feels rushed and not thought through giving it little
impact. Despite this flaw, I find it odd that the film is going to Netflix and
not making it to cinemas. As it is an adaptation of the award-winning novel of
the same name by Susanna Jones, I thought there might be an audience already
out there ready to go back to the story.