On 15 September 2023, I watched a truly weird movie finally released earlier this year after a 7-year delay (due to ongoing sfx issues) since its original filming in 2016 and initial planned release date of 2017. The last movie to feature Carrie Fisher, who never lived to see it screened (she passed away in 2016), it is entitled Wonderwell (no, not a mistyping of an Oasis song title!).
Directed by Vlad Marsavin (in his directorial debut) and written by William Brookfield, Wonderwell is a sort of Alice In Wonderland/Wizard of Oz mash-up, set (and filmed) in modern-day Italy. It focuses upon a somewhat precocious 12-year-old girl named Violet (played by Kiera Millward), who falls down a gigantic well-like plug hole (complete with plug and chain!) in the midst of a gorgeously-rendered verdant, flower-filled forest shortly after meeting a good witch named Hazel (Fisher) there.
Following her plummet down the plug hole, Violet finds herself on 'The Other Side', a fantastical wonderland of sorts, yet where everyone she knows in her own world is present too. These include her parents, teenage sister Savannah (Nell Tiger Free), and a youth named Daniele (Sebastian Croft) with whom she has lately become friends.
However, there are also terrors on The Other Side, like colossal Venus flytraps, plus an enormous hovering tentacle-encircled head that speaks and apparently eats naughty children – and where the model-turned-fashionista diva Yana (a statuesquely sinister Rita Ora), who was training Savannah to be a model back in our world, now is not only still all of that but here on The Other Side is also an evil witch, sister of Hazel, and from whom she is trying to extract a magical key with which she can then conquer the world…or something.
For although it is unquestionably visually sumptuous, Wonderwell makes no sense whatsoever, at least as far as I could tell (and reading a fair few reviews of it elsewhere, I am certainly not the only one who thinks this). The plot, whatever it is supposed to be, as nothing is ever explained fully (or even adequately in most cases), is all over the place – sporadically seeking to portray itself as a deep, meaningful, metaphorical coming-of-age journey from childhood into adolescence, but it could equally be just an overwrought, underdeveloped fantasy potboiler with no underlying meaning or significance at all (I personally lean toward this latter interpretation). Even its central character, Violet, is mercurial in the extreme – one minute she's a delightful ingénue, the next a shrewish brat.
Had more (much more!) attention been given to the storyline and script, to suffuse them with consistency and (above all else) comprehensibility, Wonderwell could have been a thoroughly enchanting, modern-day classic fantasy movie, because its visuals are extraordinarily beautiful (cinematography is by Kenji Katori), and so too is its haunting music score. Sadly, however, the lack of plot cohesion (extending even to this movie's baffling happy ending that comes out of nowhere and yet again makes no sense) is a fatal flaw. Shame.
Even so, and as noted already, Wonderwell is a magical delight for the eyes, with excellent production values – so if you'd like to watch an official trailer for it on YouTube and see for yourself, please click here.
Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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