Ti West
Pearl

Pearl was released in 2022, directed by Ti West and co-written with Mia Goth (who plays Pearl), it is the prequel to: “X: A sexy horror story” from 2021.

They were showing it the other night at a cinema I know, there was talk that the film was good, so I went. I thought… well, it's a prequel but I don't know anything anyway, actually, if I ever have to see X as well, I'd watch them in chronological order. In fact, the next day, I watched X on TV (on the sly, meaning on a not-so-flat and very in-form platform). Well, X can't even lace Pearl's shoes.

Pearl is set in 1918, in the southern United States. The war is about to end, she is young, her husband is at the front, it's not even known if he's alive or dead. Pearl lives, practically in seclusion, on a farm, with a very religious, strict, and severe German mother, and an invalid father (an absence prepared for dinner: quote).

She is young and pretty and has a dream: to become a famous dancer. She lives in a world of her own and is, how to say? …a bit odd. No, come on, I'm downplaying… Pearl is as mad as a hatter.

The film captivates and fascinates from the opening credits, sumptuous, with orchestral music(al) in a splendid and very effective homage to Hollywood cinema in the golden age.

Her psychosis for dance, her evident disorders, her macabre hobbies (which I won't spoil for you) create a quite impressive hallucinatory and horrific picture. But Pearl wants to dance and when her sister-in-law informs her that there will be a selection in town to choose a dancer for a tour (by the way, a crappy tour organized by the parish, stuff like dancing in rundown theaters in front of 4 parishioners) Pearl sets out to participate, against all rules or obstacles (of the wicked mother). Not only does she want to participate, but she also wants to win (she is absolutely sure of this). From here, the real mess begins…

A really well-made film, with high-level photography and direction, with several memorable sequences, especially the showdown with the mother. With a management of timings that is precisely dilated and changeable. Changes of time and atmosphere, now dreamlike, now bucolic, now dramatic, hallucinatory, dangerous and clumsy, unfortunate, disturbing.

Mia Goth is skillful and eerily captivating, mad a là Bette Davis (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? – Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte) but with her own style, her own identity. I highly recommend her close-ups and her monologue…

Regarding Ti West, although his marked inspiration from seventies horror masters (Toby Hooper and Wes Craven above all) is evident, equally evident is his auteur touch that, a bit like QT, steals but does not copy, because nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed. Well with Pearl, he has transformed himself into a great genre director.