REVIEWS
November 2019 | Sight&Sound | 67
disastrously than did Brian De Palma and Michael
Cristofer with their 1990 adaptation of Tom
Wolfe’s also Dickensian The Bonfire of the Vanities).
It’s worth noting that Tartt is influenced not
only by Dickens but by Robert Louis Stevenson,
whose adventure novels are propelled by
their flow of striking incidents. In abandoning
the strict linearity of Tartt’s story to intercut
between as many as three temporal strands at
once, the film may replicate Theo’s stream of
consciousness as, stuck in an Amsterdam hotel
room he looks back on his disastrous journey
and contemplates suicide, but it’s at the cost of
narrative rhythm and Stevensonian electricity.
Especially flat is the long middle act. The
offscreen murder of Larry for defaulting on his
gambling debts fails to elicit excitement. (That
the acid-tripping Theo and Boris giggle when
they learn of his demise is admittedly a nice
touch.) The screenplay drains Tartt’s story of its
unease by neglecting the nausea-inducing fear
Theo lives with, knowing that his theft of ‘The
Goldfinch’ would, if discovered, earn him a long
prison sentence. Con man Lucius Reeve’s threat to
report Theo to the FBI goes nowhere. Theo’s Great
Expectations-like wooing of his soulmate Pippa is
thwarted more by her belief that, as victims of the
bombing, they would never be strong enough to
lean on each other; their tender relationship is not
the tragedy of unrequited love it is in the novel. On
the plus side, the film brings Theo to a powerful
catharsis. At his lowest ebb, he finally recalls his
last exchanges with Audrey. Hitherto seen only
from behind – and voiceless – she materialises as
the inspirational mother who, with affecting words
and looks, impressed on him the beauty of art.
Idealised her character may be, but actress Hailey
Wist makes the most of her brief appearance.
More problematic is the earlier section, when
the orphaned Theo moves in with school friend
Andy Barbour and his wealthy parents, Samantha
and Chance, and the film shifts its focus to its
biggest star. Nicole Kidman’s Samantha becomes
Theo’s mother surrogate (as Hobie replaces his
father). But as Samantha’s aloofness towards Theo
gives way to affection, Crowley so frequently cuts
to her giving him enquiring and caring looks as to
make her the subject of their scenes together. After
Theo returns from Vegas, he consoles Samantha,
who is grieving for Andy, who has drownded with
Chance. Kidman is typically fine as this unhappy
woman, but the filmmakers err in treating her
so reverently. More attention might have been
given to making the performances of Ansel Elgort
and Aneurin Barnard, the older Theo and Boris,
resonate as much as those of the actors who play
them as teens. Finn Wolfhard is a joy as Boris,
whose sybaritism jolts Oakes Fegley’s Theo out
of his solipsism, if not his Harry Potter-ishness.
There’s no faulting Roger Deakins’s dreamy
cinematography or K.K. Barrett’s diverse
production design – perfect in its recreation of
the Barbours’ once elegant apartment, Larry’s
suburban Vegas house bordering the desert
and the seedy Amsterdam bar where Theo
and Boris retrieve ‘The Goldfinch’. Trevor
Gureckis’s classical score is suitably discordant,
though the use of songs by New Order and
Radiohead seems modish, no matter that Tartt
mentions the latter band in her book.
Reviewed by Kim Newman
This spare, intense, Northern Ireland-set
crime movie showcases an excellent star
turn from Sarah Bolger – whose varied CV
includes the vampire-struck victim of The Moth
Diaries (2011) and the psycho nanny of Emelie
(2015) – as a widowed young mum driven
to extremes when the violent gangland that
took her husband’s life spills into her house.
Tito (Andrew Simpson), a chancer in an
unhelpfully distinctive orange hoodie, ram-
raids a couple of drug dealers and forces his
way into the home of Sarah Collins, already
thoroughly put-upon by the police’s lack of
interest in her husband’s murder (they presume
he was another gang member), the disdain of
her middle-class mother (Jane Brennan) for
her life choices, embarrassing privations such
as having to pry batteries out of a toy to power
her vibrator, and the demands of two young
children, one of whom hasn’t spoken since
witnessing her husband’s stabbing. Tito hides
the drugs in her bathroom and returns for
them – quixotically offering a partnership (and
a generous percentage) in the sales, then making
himself creepily comfortable in her front room.
Of course, local drug lord Miller (Edward Hogg,
in a ‘Sean Harris’ role) – who has a pernickety
sense of grammar – wants to extract vengeance
from the rip-off artist. Silent young Ben (Rudy
Doherty) cringes when Miller looms, hinting
that the small-scale boss (an English transplant)
is ultimately responsible for all Sarah’s woes.
Rather like Dominic Brunt’s Bait (2014), this
depicts an ordinary woman being downtrodden
by criminals and economic circumstance and
eventually compelled to gruesome acts that
earned A Good Woman Is Hard to Find a prime
slot in London’s horror-themed FrightFest event.
It might otherwise be a Ken Loach chick-flick
take on Harry Brown (2009), as the heroine
endures repeated abuses from individual men
and an uncaring system... until a climax in
which she dolls up as a film noir blonde, with a
gun in one hand and a blood-leaking bag in the
other, in order to face her monster in his lair.
Ronan Blaney’s script is so pared down that
the tight little knot of a plot is almost too neat.
The darkly comic scene with the batteries and
the vibrator is also a set-up for a later violent plot
development, as is Ben’s habit of ferreting out and
eating supermarket sweeties before they’ve been
paid for. Abner Pastoll (Road Games) directs with
an eye for local detail and a confidence that just
pointing the camera at the excellent Bolger’s face
during the most squirm-inducing sequences will
convey more than the flashes of special-effects
gore. Though Sarah reacts against criminals,
she’s patronised, ignored, irritated and hit on by
almost everyone – a supermarket security guard
who takes her for a hooker, a social worker who
assumes a broken window must be her fault,
police more interested in a noise complaint than
a killing, and her endlessly disappointed mother.
Most crime movies, especially those from
the UK, feed into the image of petty crooks as
likeable, almost-admirable rebels, and have
an implied contempt for ‘civilians’. This is
a rare film to remember that even low-level
criminal losers such as Tito – brilliantly
played as a little boy who can’t understand
why the woman he’s dragooning into a drug
deal doesn’t like him – can be terrifying to be
around and more liable to batter or stab their
way to what they immediately want without
thinking of the inevitable consequences
due in five minutes’ time than to rattle off a
monologue about pop culture or fast food.
A Good Woman Is Hard to Find
United Kingdom/Belgium 2019
Director: Abner Pastoll
Northern Ireland, present day. Sarah Collins, recently
widowed, struggles to bring up her children Ben and
Lucy on a crime-ridden estate. Ben hasn’t spoken
since witnessing his father’s murder, which the police
aren’t interested in solving. Tito, a low-level crook,
steals some drugs from a pair of dealers who work
for local crime boss Leo Miller. He barges into Sarah’s
ground-floor flat and demands she shelter him – later
returning because he’s hidden the stolen drugs in
her bathroom. Tito forces Sarah into a partnership,
giving her a percentage of the money he makes by
selling the drugs, but when he tries to rape her, she
stabs him to death and dismembers his corpse. Leo
traces Tito to Sarah and threatens her children unless
she returns his product, which Ben has innocently
destroyed. Ben identifies Leo as his father’s killer.
Sarah invades Leo’s pub lair and shoots him. The
police write off the deaths as part of a drug war.
Producer
Junyoung Jang
Guillaume Benski
Written by
Ronan Blaney
Director of
Photography
Richard Bell
Film Editor
Abner Pastoll
Production Designer
Gillian Devenney
Music
Matthew Pusti
Supervising
Sound Editor
Nick Baldock
Costume Designer
Elise Ancion
©February Films,
Frakas Productions
Production
Companies
A presentation [of]
February Films,
Superbe Films,
Frakas Productions
With the support
of Casa Kafka
Pictures - Belfius
In co-production
with VOO and BeTV
In association with
Quickfire Films,
JBG Pictures, BA
Entertainment,
Wallimage (Wallonia)
and Northern
Ireland Screen
Executive Producers
James Atherton
Jan Pace
Billy Acumen
Bumsu Lee
Abner Pastoll
Cast
Sarah Bolger
Sarah Collins
Edward Hogg
Leo Miller
Andrew Simpson
Tito
Jane Brennan
Alice
Caolan Byrne
Terry
Packy Lee
Mackers
Rudy Doherty
Ben
Macie McCauley
Lucy
Susan Ateh
Emily Scott
Josh Bolt
Donal
Siobhan Kelly
Dr Rosa Brady
Sean Sloan
Jimmy
In Colour
[2.35:1]
Distributor
Signature
Entertainment
Avenging angel: Sarah Bolger
Credits and Synopsis
A RT
PRODUCTION
CLIENT
SUBS
REPRO OP
VERSION
Reviews, 10
