Sundance: 'You Won't Be Alone' stirs and shape-shifts
Monday, January 24, 2022 at 8:00PM by Matt St Clair
You Won’t Be Alone, the new Macedonian folk horror tale premiering at Sundance, is not for the faint of heart. Yet, for a film with such grotesque violence, Goran Stolevski's feature debut is strangely moving and intimate. His film is a poetic and philosophical depiction of what it means to be human; It arouses and stirs as often as it repels...
When teenager Nevena (Sara Klimoska) is thrust into the world after being kept hidden away by her mother in a secret cave, she is taken under the wing of Old Maid Maria (Anamaria Marinca of 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days). Maria, a skinless witch, had made a bargain with Nevena’s mother sixteen years earlier.
When Nevena comes of age, the witch turns her into a “wolf-eateress” like herself. Nevena then blends into a local village by hiding behind the skins of its inhabitants, both human and animal.
The picture gets off to a slow start while Nevena is still trapped in her cave. But once she finally steps out, the film kicks into high gear, becoming a macabre coming-of-age tale of a girl finding her place in the world as she tries steering away from her surrogate mother. Once she begins shapeshifting, the film demonstrates an intriguing trans/gender non-conforming allegory. This is particularly noticeable when Nevena sees a young man named Boris (Diamantino’s Carloto Cotta). Nevena isn't just in awe of his chiseled physical appearance, but decides to take his form. Through narration, Nevena ponders whether it’s better to live freely as a man like Boris in a patriarchal regime or under the skin of womanhood like the peasant Bosilka (Noomi Rapace) who is forced to live subserviently. Nevena’s ability to transcend gender and even species allows You Won’t Be Alone to play into the historical link between monsters and queerness that remains present in the horror genre.
You Won't Be Alone benefits enormously from its use of practical makeup effects. CGI permeates modern day horror films but the makeup work on Anamaria Marinca's witch is far more terrifying than if the character was brought to life by a computer instead of a human actor.
Through genius camerawork by DP Matthew Chuang, even Nevena’s transformations feel like practical effects. For instance, during her morph into Bosilka, the actress distorts her back before the camera cuts to “Bosilka’s” face, signaling completion of the transformation. The actors playing the disguises that Nevena takes on, like Noomi Rapace, Alice Englert, and Carloto Cotta, are all seamlessly convincing.
While she has only marginal amounts of screentime, Anamaria Marinca's presence, even under layers of prosthetics, lingers and menaces. Nevena aims to defy her in this macabre meditation on navigating through the trials of human life and disrupting heteronormative structure. It's a haunting movie that certainly won’t leave my mind anytime soon. A
You Won’t Be Alone is playing in the World Cinema Competition program and will be released by Focus Features in the US on April 1st.
Reader Comments (1)
Okay, Matt, I'm sold. Can't wait to see this (even though i'll be watching through fingers)