‘The Wonder’: Toronto Review

Dir: Sebastian Lelio. UK/Ireland. 2022. 108mins

Faith is at the centre of The Wonder; which is just as true for Chilean director Sebastian Lelio, who trusts that this tormented psychological period piece will never become too much for us to bear. Florence Pugh plays a 19th-century English nurse sent to Ireland for a strange assignment — monitoring a religious 11-year-old who has reportedly not eaten for four months, claiming that she subsists on “manna from Heaven” — and in the process delivers a performance that’s as gripping as anything she’s put on screen. Adapting Emma Donoghue’s novel, Lelio sometimes ratchets up the intensity too high, but the picture’s unbending severity becomes a virtue in and of itself: like the cloistered community in which Pugh’s character finds herself, The Wonder permits no escape.

Florence Pugh delivers a performance that’s as gripping as anything she’s put on screen

Screening at Telluride and Toronto, this Netflix release will soon play San Sebastian and London, later hitting the streaming platform in early December. Pugh’s other award-season release, Don’t Worry Darling, has attracted more attention, but this is the superior picture. Appealing to arthouse audiences familiar with Lelio from Gloria and the Oscar-winning A Fantastic Woman, The Wonder may prove too prickly for mainstream crowds — indeed, this is a film that’s easier to respect than love.

The year is 1862, and Lib (Pugh) travels by boat to Ireland, where a small-town community has hired her to observe Anna (Kila Lord Cassidy); a girl who has fasted for months but claims to be in perfect health. This devoutly religious population wants Lib to confirm whether they’re witnessing a miracle, which Lib highly doubts. But the more time she spends with Anna, the more concerned she gets about this young woman and the rural town where she resides. 

Lelio’s follow-up to Gloria Bell, his English-language remake of Gloria, isn’t quite a horror film, but one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Thanks to Matthew Herbert’s anxiety-inducing percussive score and Ari Wegner’s magnificently gloomy shots of sweeping Irish countryside, The Wonder hums with unease. Even Cassidy’s serenely still performance hints at something menacing going on, although there’s nothing resembling a jump scare or gore in the picture — with the exception of the bloody tooth Anna loses early on, a possible indication that her condition is worsening.

The film’s writing team is impeccable: alongside Lelio, cowriter Donoghue (working from her own novel) previously penned the book and screen adaptation for Room, while Alice Birch wrote the screenplay for Pugh’s breakthrough, Lady Macbeth. Not surprisingly, then, The Wonder has a literary quality to its restrained anguish, constantly teasing the viewer with potential revelations. (Why does Lib have a pair of baby booties? Why is London reporter Will, played superbly smugly by Tom Burke, so interested in this story?) There’s a mystery at the heart of The Wonder concerning Anna’s inexplicably long fast, but Lib’s uncovering of what’s actually going on will only prompt more questions — not to mention force Lib to confront elements of her painful past.

Because The Wonder emphasises atmosphere over plot, the picture can sometimes feel baggy — a situation not helped by Lelio creating a claustrophobic tone that’s palpable but also a bit overdone. Lib and Will’s relationship escalates a little too quickly to be entirely believable, and likewise some of Lib’s decisions regarding how to handle Anna feel rushed.

In addition, Lelio introduces a framing device in which, at the start and the end of the film, we see the studio sets where The Wonder is being shot — a device meant to underline the fact that all stories, including the one we’re watching and the ones The Wonder’s characters tell themselves about their unhappy lives, is constructed. But considering that everything from The Souvenir: Part II to the recent HBO remake of Scenes From A Marriage has incorporated a similar narrative technique, this meta approach isn’t quite so novel anymore.

That said, Pugh’s agonised turn keeps us riveted, her Lib determined to get to the truth – even if it’s not the answer this God-fearing community wants to hear. There is no shortage of ideas bouncing around in The Wonder: the terrible treatment of women in patriarchal communities, the ways in which we never recover from the loss of a loved one, our need to believe in a higher power to make sense of our misery. Those themes are reflected in Pugh’s stern expressions and defiant eyes, the actress playing a nurse who starts off suspicious of Anna but comes to connect with the young woman, both of them trapped in their own circumstance. In such an unforgiving climate, perhaps they’ll eventually find transcendence.