“Toxic”: Review of Locarno | Reviews

Director: Saule Bliuvaite. Lithuania. 2024. 99 mins

Toxicity takes many forms in Saule Bliuvaite’s dark and sharply observed coming-of-age debut from Lithuania, winner of the Golden Leopard at Locarno. It is present everywhere, from the environment to the toxic attitudes the female protagonists are tacitly and actively encouraged to hold towards themselves. Drawing on the director’s own experiences as a teenager, this is a raw and uncompromising look at the pressures girls face in places with few prospects for the future but ample access to the internet.

Roaring teen spirit

Bliuvaite deals with this desolate environment in a similar way to the US director Sean Baker (Red Rocket, the Florida project), by avoiding poverty porn, by looking directly at teenagers instead of down on them, and by celebrating the surprising friendships that can arise in the most unlikely places. Poisonous’The victory at Locarno and the fact that the title is a buzzword on social media should help the film gain traction both inside and outside the festival scene.

Marija (Vesta Matulyte) has been brought with her grandmother to a small Lithuanian town where every setting is marred by industry, from cooling towers to power poles. A freshman, 13-year-old Marija has limped since birth, and is vulnerable to bullying. An early scene in which her jeans are stolen from a dressing room shows Bliuvaite’s intention to use more experimental techniques to take us into the teenager’s mind. When Marija peers into a locker, naturalism is briefly jettisoned, creating a cavernous space. Such elements are found throughout the film, and it is to the writer/director’s credit that she incorporates them in an unobtrusive way that never spoils the mood.

The stolen jeans lead to a catfight with Kristina (Ieva Rupeikaite), a spirited local girl whose home life is loving but questionable. As with teenagers, this negative energy soon turns positive and a friendship develops. Kristina is the braver of the two and believes she is street smarter. These girls try to grow up fast and hang out with older boys who pump them full of alcohol and drugs in return.

But the main way to make the girls’ dreams come true is a modeling agency that has come to town and offers a possible way out. Here, desperation meets determination, and every teenager in the district applies to be selected, even though the outfit is a fraud from start to finish. The girls are poked and measured as they practice their catwalk: bulimia, swallowing cotton wool or even tapeworms are considered the price to pay for selection.

The cool palette used by cinematographer Vytautas Katkus – also a writer and director and who has already made a number of short films, including the one shown in Cannes Cherries – pays off especially in the scenes with the model agency, as this emphasizes the girls’ youth and vulnerability. Occasional electronic interludes by Gediminas Jakubka reinforce the feeling of alienation. Poisonous also benefits from two outstanding performances from the young, first-time leading ladies, with Matulyte’s more introspective approach perfectly matching the unpredictable energy that Rupeikaite brings to Kristina.

Bliuvaite – who has directed several short films and co-wrote the Lithuanian film Isaac, nominated for the 2022 Oscar for Foreign Language Film – deserves attention for the way she addresses eating disorders and body image issues without exploiting her teenage cast or making such choices seem tempting. Vomiting is not glamorous, and a video about tapeworms that Marija sees is the stuff of nightmares.

Toxic’s plot is roiled by the girls’ emotional whirlwind as much as the plot’s development, but the mix of positive and negative energies makes the film pulse with youthful spirit. “Confidence is the most important thing,” Marija is told, and Bliuvaite has plenty of it and the talent to back it up.