Sep­tem­ber Says – first-look review

When we first meet Sep­tem­ber and July, their moth­er Sheela (Rakhee Thakrar) is instruct­ing them on how to pose in their Grady Twins cos­tumes as part of her ongo­ing pho­tog­ra­phy project. July hap­pi­ly com­plies; Sep­tem­ber scowls. Flash for­ward a few years, and the pair are awk­ward teenagers, played by Pas­cale Kann and Mia Tharia – maybe twins, maybe not, they share a secret lan­guage and a set of bul­lies. While July main­tains a code of silence and attempts to com­plete­ly ignore their jibes, Sep­tem­ber, ever the more con­fi­dent sis­ter, bites back. She cuts off the ringleader’s pony­tail, she takes to car­ry a flick knife to pro­tect her­self and her sis­ter. But is her semi-fer­al atti­tude help­ful? When Sep­tem­ber is sus­pend­ed from school for act­ing out, July seems to breathe a sigh of relief.

Adapt­ed from Daisy Johnson’s nov­el Sis­ters, Ari­ane Labed’s direc­to­r­i­al debut is part goth­ic fairy­tale, part hor­ror sto­ry, with stilt­ed rhythms and strange imagery that evokes the Greek New Wave through which Labed rose to fame. Yet the film is firm­ly ground­ed in British and Irish iconog­ra­phy, as the three women depart for their absent grandmother’s cot­tage on the Irish coast mid­way through the film fol­low­ing a mys­te­ri­ous tragedy which remains opaque until late in the game. There’s a sense the fam­i­ly are mired in tragedy; the death of July and September’s father is allud­ed to but nev­er ful­ly explained, and there’s some sug­ges­tion he was no saint. Sep­tem­ber, a dom­i­neer­ing pres­ence, lacks her sister’s seren­i­ty, and such seems com­pelled to con­trol her at every turn. Sheela, mean­while, is a ditzy moth­er, well-mean­ing but dis­tant from her daugh­ters, an out­sider to their unique rela­tion­ship. In one extreme­ly fun­ny but per­haps out-of-place scene, she picks up a bloke at a pub for a one-night stand, which is nar­rat­ed in a stream-of-con­scious­ness voice-over.

If there’s one com­plaint, it’s that a very sil­ly third-act reveal some­what under­mines the som­bre­ness of the film. This is prob­a­bly a detail tak­en direct­ly from the source mate­r­i­al, and it pos­si­bly has a more touch­ing impact on the page, but on screen it is just left-field enough to be dis­tract­ing, verg­ing on com­i­cal, rather than devastating.

Even so, evok­ing the strange com­bi­na­tion of bru­tal British real­ism and light fan­ta­sy of Jacque­line Wilson’s icon­ic young adult nov­els (par­tic­u­lar­ly Dou­ble Act), it’s a promis­ing debut for Labed, who moves between the uncan­ny and the ten­der with ease. Her DoP Balt­haz­ar Lab cap­tures the windswept beau­ty of the Irish coast, which is as arrest­ing as it is fore­bod­ing. We’re always at a slight remove from Sep­tem­ber and July, and there’s some­thing voyeuris­tic about the rigid angles of the cam­era, as though we’re being told a secret that we’re not quite com­fort­able hearing.