Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s “Earwig”
Earwig (2021)
Beautifully shot with nice production design and haunting music, this ambient-horror lacks anything to engage be it a story, suspense, sense of mystery, connection to the characters or anything we’ve not seen before
Even to my patient sensibilities, this tested me. Based on novella by Brian Catling with a screenplay from Geoff Cox, it tells the story of Albert(Paul Hilton) who is caring for a young girl, Mia(Romane Hemelaers) who oddly has ice for teeth which requires frequent changing. An apparatus which frames her face collects saliva to be used in moulds of her gums to create new teeth. Living entirely in a flat in central Europe(the location is never fully explained) with virtually no decor, we watch their monotonous daily routine.
The problem is that explaining nothing doesn’t a mystery make. I have a high tolerance to what most people would refer to as “slow pacing” but this tested me. Usually films that are paced like this give me something to consider, but I was left with nothing to think about aside from trying to think of all the films where I had seen this before. “Eraserhead” has been mentioned while talking about this, but that’s a considerable stretch. That 45 year old movie is still an invigorating and exciting experience. It’s certainly in the realm of being referred to as Kafkaesque but David Jones’ “The Trial” with a screenplay from Harold Pinter is a much richer experience as is Soderbergh’s “Kafka”. It’s also been referred to as experimental, but again, the lack of coherency doesn’t make it “experimental” and if anything, it’s pretty conservative.
For positives, the cinematography is terrific, the minimalist score haunting and the production design is good. In terms of the acting, it’s all quite wooden with the exception of Romola Garai(whose recent directorial debut Amulet I enjoyed). I understand that it might be a stylistic choice, but I’ve not seen any evidence that there’s a purpose behind it.
Overall, this is a turgid, languorous piece of ambient cinema that brings nothing new to the table despite some promising ideas.
