Pearl Still Kicking

I can't tell how bad 2022's X is supposed to be. Sometimes it feels like an intentional parody, other times I think it's meant to be sincere. It successfully creates some tension and some of the practical effects are great. But the makeup effects are laughably bad and its conception of the '70s porn industry seems to be based on 2000s Internet sketch comedy. Mia Goth gives a good performance as one character and a bad performance as another. It was the best of films, it was the worst of films.

X is a sequel to Pearl, or Pearl is a prequel to X. They were both made at the same time using the same sets but shot in different styles, an idea I really like. Both were directed and written by Ti West, though Pearl was co-written by Mia Goth, which, I suspect, is what makes it the superior film.

Where Pearl is set in 1918 and shot like a 1950s film, X is set in 1979 (the year of my birth!) and shot kind of like a Tobe Hooper movie with elements of Brian De Palma. Pearl's an old lady now, still played by Mia Goth, still living on the old farm. A group of young people come to stay at a boarding house on her property with the intention of making a porno. Mia Goth also plays Maxine, a would-be porn superstar in the group.

Her desire for fame resembles Pearl's and I guess the intended message was something like, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." I don't know. What I do know is that Pearl's old lady makeup looks really stupid.

I kept thinking, "Old ladies exist. You could've hired one and saved money on your makeup budget." She looks like DeForest Kelley in "Encounter at Farpoint". Except the old person makeup on Star Trek: The Next Generation was actually a bit better. Goth's performance as the old lady was really unconvincing, too. Her old lady voice reminded me of Lea Thompson in Back to the Future.

I feel like Ti West watched '70s movies with the intention of learning to make a film like Quentin Tarantino. He's undermined considerably by the fact that he shot on digital. Everything looks overlit, too. There's a scene where a guy steps on a rusty nail at night and I thought, "How couldn't you see that? It's like daylight."

There are a couple sex scenes for when they shoot the porno, invariably accompanied by cheesy faux-'70s funk music. I get it, West, you think porn is silly, but could you at least try to see it from the perspective of your characters? Oddly, I feel like he thought he was doing just that when he has them sitting around spouting a cheap philosophical argument about sex and free love. I had my issues with Pearl but at least it didn't undercut itself this badly.

Mia Goth (in the Maxine role) and Jenna Ortega both look great in the movie and there's some cool practical effects when Pearl starts chopping people up. But, man oh man, is this movie dumb.

"There's Always Some Killing You Got to Do Around the Farm"

I think my expectations were a little too high for 2022's Pearl. I'd seen it on a few "best of the year" lists and I heard Martin Scorsese liked it. Maybe if I hadn't heard all that, I could have just enjoyed the film's old-fashioned style and talented lead actress. As it was, I just couldn't help thinking I was watching Blue Velvet with fewer dimensions.

Pearl (Mia Goth) is a naive farmgirl, pining for her new husband who's off fighting in World War I. The film's set in 1918 during the Spanish flu pandemic and the film wastes no time drawing parallels between it and the Corona virus pandemic.

This is the third 2022 movie I've seen that actually has characters wearing medical masks, after Three Thousand Years of Longing and Glass Onion. Hollywood can't ignore the reality anymore.

Pearl doesn't really use it to make commentary, though when one character complained about the isolation I thought it was a bit of an anachronism. Living in a rural town in 1918, pandemic imposed isolation couldn't have been that much different from the normal day-to-day.

Pearl's mother, Ruth (Tandi Wright), is mean and doesn't like her daughter having too much fun. Her father (Matthew Sunderland) is totally paralysed and can't speak. Pearl makes friends with the farm animals except she occasionally kills one of them to feed to an alligator living in a nearby river.

It's clear pretty early on that Pearl is a psychopath, but she's also innocent and pretty and wants to be a movie star. The film uses her to mock the idealism of old Hollywood by contrasting her disturbing behaviour with a lovely orchestral score and saturated, Technicolour-ish cinematography. I guess that stuff is pretty on its own, regardless of what director Ti West is trying to do with it. Some of the stuff I think was meant to be disturbing comes off as funny or sweet, like when Pearl starts French kissing a scarecrow or a moment when she says she wishes her parents would die. She says the latter to a sleazy projectionist who's trying to flirt with her and it causes him to back off a little, frightened. It felt really false--a guy like that should've either laughed or taken it as a cue to press his advantage.

Mia Goth's a good actress but the film overindulges her a few times, kind of reminding me of Michael Fassbender in 12 Years a Slave. There are moments where her over-emoting is meant to be disturbing, I'm sure, but it starts to come off more as Mia Goth just holding a take for too long, especially the film's final shot.

There were a few scenes I liked very much. I really liked the showdown between Pearl and her mother, the screaming match between them really felt like a brawl between two monsters and it's interesting to think about, comparing and contrasting it with normal parent/child relationships.

Mainly I wish the film had brought us into Pearl's perspective a little more. The film's lovely style is consciously modelled on Douglas Sirk and feels very much like the 1950s, so it's not the Hollywood of Pearl's time. I would have liked to have seen show business through her eyes, something glamorous and magnificent instead of just ironic. I realised I wanted to watch Blue Velvet, which I did afterwards.