Lizzie – first look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

Lizzie – first look review

30 Jan 2018

Words by Monica Castillo

Two people's faces very close together, gazing intensely at each other.
Two people's faces very close together, gazing intensely at each other.
Chloë Sevi­gny plays infa­mous axe killer Lizzie Bor­den in direc­tor Craig William Macneill’s chill­ing drama.

Lizzie Bor­den took an axe / And gave her moth­er forty whacks / When she saw what she had done / She gave her father forty-one”

Expand­ing on the dead­ly play­ground rhyme, Craig William Macneill’s Lizzie inserts a sala­cious amount of love, cru­el­ty and fam­i­ly dra­ma. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly in that order, but the effect is all the same. There will be blood on that hatchet.

The film begins where this sto­ry must: at the crime scene. Blood splat­tered on the del­i­cate cur­tains, dain­ty walls and wood­en fur­ni­ture. The deceased are found in their wealthy but aus­tere New Eng­land home. It was not a hap­py house­hold, and their prob­lems far pre­date the hor­rors now stain­ing the floors. After Lizzie (Chloë Sevi­gny) calls for the family’s maid, the sto­ry jumps back to when Brid­get Sul­li­van (Kris­ten Stew­art) first walks into the Borden’s dark­ened home.

The sever­i­ty of this home quick­ly becomes appar­ent. Lizzie’s father and step moth­er did not both­er to learn Bridget’s name, so she is referred to as Mag­gie after an ear­li­er employ­ee. Lat­er that night, at the opera, Lizzie fends off soci­ety gos­sip over the fact that her dad doesn’t believe in indoor light­ing. Oh, the scandal!

From here the film only grows dark­er. There’s a seri­ous ill­ness, work­place sex­u­al assault, abuse and mat­ters of inher­i­tance loom­ing over what will final­ly lead to the heinous crime. When the open­ing scene is revis­it­ed, where­in Lizzie dis­cov­ers the bod­ies of her par­ents and calls for Brid­get to help her, the film debunks the audience’s assump­tions about the old folk rhyme. Thank good­ness we don’t need to sit through 40 whacks.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the film nev­er quite cross­es that line into campy ter­ri­to­ry, mere­ly teas­ing what a less seri­ous treat­ment of Lizzie’s sto­ry might look like. That absur­dist style is per­haps best scene in the momen­tous killing scene. For some rea­son, the women have fig­ured out that it is eas­i­er to wash blood off of skin rather than clothes, so the mur­ders hap­pen when the killers are naked. Now there’s a visu­al, and one that the cam­era focus­es on quite astutely.

Although the cos­tume and pro­duc­tion design are spot-on, not every­thing quite fits seam­less­ly into the film’s con­trived plot. Because of the dis­as­so­ci­a­tion in Sevigny’s per­for­mance, her character’s sala­cious affair with Stewart’s mild-man­nered ser­vant is luke­warm most of the time. How­ev­er, the film is at its most fas­ci­nat­ing when the pow­er dynam­ic between employ­ee and employ­er comes to the fore. It’s a gen­tle dance, one where the poor­er of the cou­ple is more aware of being exploit­ed than the thought­less one already in power.

Or, does Lizzie know just what she wants out of her time with Brid­get. The film hints at a pos­si­ble answer, but it’s vague. We’re left to make up our own mind about the events in this sto­ry, and whether or not the women’s love was as true or fake as that old rhyme.

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