Title: Pearl (2022)
Runtime: 1hr 42min
Rating: ★★★★ ½
In the midst of textbook readings and school assignments, instead of watching the actual movie I was assigned (“Ball of Fire,” if all one of you is wondering), I instead decided to pull out a film from the catalogue that I’ve been meaning to get around to: Pearl. Before even starting this I had to go ahead and make sure it wasn’t necessary for me to see X (2022) first (which I also have not seen and have been meaning to get around to).
Basically, it goes as follows: Pearl is a farmgirl who dreams of becoming a dancer in order to leave her countryside life for something more exciting. She doesn’t want to end up like her mother, and she will try to do that by any means necessary.
First off: This bitch is crazy! At this point I’m not even sure if keeping her isolated helped or hindered her. She didn’t need to be off the farm, but being on the farm might’ve just made the problem worse!
Honestly, I’m pretty sure Pearl doesn’t even want to be a dancer. This is probably pretty obvious, but the dancing isn’t the goal: it’s simply a means to an end. Joining a dance troupe represents travel which represents leaving. She doesn’t care how she gets out of there, just that she does. That’s why we pretty much never see her practicing or anything. She’s doing what every maladaptive daydreamer does: envision the reality you want to live to the point of forgetting to accomplish it in waking life. I did have to briefly pause and look away at the start of the audition, but it wasn’t the bomb wreck I was expecting, so it wasn’t as bad to sit through.
Pearl, as we plainly see later on in the film, will even kill if it means escaping the prison which is the life she was damned to live, and the cycle she was straddled to repeat. I have to say, it’s hilarious that you can tell the exact moment the projectionist goes from thinking, “This bitch is hot,” to “this bitch is crazy.” You can really tell he regrets being sleazy with the wrong married spouse even before the pitchfork is driven through his ribcage. Pearl has about the least hesitation I’ve seen from anyone on screen to kill! She’d do it in a heartbeat.
In some ways I understand where she’s coming from. Was it necessary to kill to do it? Yeah, probably not. But even if she wasn’t a very good dancer, you can’t say Pearl wasn’t dedicated to getting the hell out of there! Even with this contradicting what I said in this post two paragraphs ago, she wasn’t even the worst dancer. She wasn’t stellar, or anything, but I definitely see why they didn’t choose her. There’s probably a lot of plain-faced, hick girls like her who are clawing their way to leave the fields for a life of glamour, and even if it was an excuse in the end, saying that they “had girls like her in the troupe already” probably wasn’t that far off from the truth.
I was not surprised to find out Pearl had been pregnant. I REALLY thought they were going to allude more that she intentionally caused her own miscarriage, but it seems like it happened naturally. Honestly thank God. I can’t imagine what it would be like for a child to be damned into that kind of environment.
Another thing: I also fully expected there to be a bit of a role reversal between the main family. So Pearl kills the father, and then the mother somehow survives ALL that, barely clinging onto life for days, and takes the father’s role, and Pearl inherits her mother’s role as caretaker. Instead they all die, which works too.
Mia Goth has some incredible acting. She has a face that fits historical dramas. I didn’t expect anyone in this film to have perfectly accurate southern accents, so I won’t even talk about that part, but damn that girl can scream. I don’t know how many kudos I want to give, though; I’m writing this in the middle of the “kicking MaXXXine extra in the head” controversy, so…
Overall, this was pretty good. I don’t think it’ll go down on my list of new favorites or anything, but I can definitely see why it’s so popular. And why it’s featured on so many “female rage” edits on YouTube. Speaking of which, now I have to get around to watching X. The first glimpse of anything I saw in this trilogy was Lorraine’s death from X. I knew nothing about what was coming and subsequently busted out laughing. It’s like she slipped on a violent banana peel.
But that’s enough for today! I have plenty of assignments to catch up on before I go to sleep. Maybe I’ll browse a bit of my textbook. My eyes are getting a bit heavy, though. I just can’t stay up like I used to anymore!
This review was posted the day prior after midnight, apart of the “After Midnight” series ★
HAPPY 
leave a comment