Dirty God | Little White Lies

Dirty God

04 Jun 2019 / Released: 07 Jun 2019

Young person leaning on car, palm trees in background.
Young person leaning on car, palm trees in background.
3

Anticipation.

Interesting premise treated from a respectful point-of-view.

3

Enjoyment.

Clunky but unique.

4

In Retrospect.

Slightly uneven but elevated by Vicky Knight’s performance.

A vic­tim of an acid attack learns to cope with her trau­ma in Sacha Polak’s emo­tion­al­ly intel­li­gent drama.

Between 2012 and 2016, the num­ber of acid attacks in the UK increased by 500 per cent, one of the high­est rates of record­ed acid and cor­ro­sive sub­stance attacks per capi­ta of any­where in the world. Though the major­i­ty of these attacks are men-on-men crimes, in oth­er coun­tries acid attacks tend to be relat­ed to gen­der vio­lence, with women mak­ing up most of the vic­tims. Sacha Polak’s third fea­ture, Dirty God, focus­es on one such crime of pas­sion,” though it thank­ful­ly denies the crim­i­nal the ben­e­fit of hav­ing his motives ever spelled out for the audience.

Rather, this Lon­don-set dra­ma cen­tres on the expe­ri­ence of a sur­vivor Jade (played by real-life burn sur­vivor Vicky Knight in her first role), as she learns to live with her trau­ma and her scars. Polak taste­ful­ly denies the audi­ence the mor­bid thrill of see­ing the attack, begin­ning the film well after the event. Jade is first seen return­ing from the hos­pi­tal and back home in the coun­cil flat she shares with her tod­dler and her own moth­er. Her scars on her face and arms are clear­ly vis­i­ble, but Dirty God is less inter­est­ed in them than it is in Jade, and her efforts to live the reg­u­lar life of a young woman in London.

A woman wearing a sleeveless sequinned dress stands in front of a pink tower against a cloudy sky.

These scenes of every­day life are the film’s most vivid, depict­ing the ins and outs of work­ing-class life with a refresh­ing lack of judg­ment or pity. Jade is a moth­er who can take care of her child, but she is also a young woman who likes to par­ty with her best friend Sha­mi (Rebec­ca Stone) and flirt with boys. The two lifestyles are nev­er shown as incom­pat­i­ble, and when Jade’s moth­er Lisa (Kather­ine Kel­ly) objects to her daughter’s par­ty­ing, it is clear the tight-lipped woman is only wor­ried for her child.

By con­trast, Sha­mi (Rebec­ca Stone) acts like noth­ing has changed. She acts, talks, and looks at Jade the same way she did before the inci­dent. This helps Jade main­tain a sense of nor­mal­cy, but does not account for her pain or trau­ma. Besides the casu­al cru­el­ty of strangers, even those with the best inten­tions strug­gle to find the right words or to know how to help, and the shy Jade is torn between the expec­ta­tions of every­one around her.

She finds guid­ance when she sets her­self the goal of gath­er­ing enough mon­ey for rel­a­tive­ly cheap recon­struc­tive surgery in Moroc­co. As the film becomes less obser­va­tion­al and more nar­ra­tive­ly-dri­ven, its clunky pac­ing and clum­sy edit­ing unfor­tu­nate­ly become more appar­ent. Scenes set at a hotel resort in Moroc­co fond­ly evoke Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar, but they also feel rather forced and predictable.

Knight’s per­for­mance remains the film’s emo­tion­al anchor through­out. She excels in por­tray­ing a com­plex char­ac­ter who, shy and imma­ture at first, even­tu­al­ly realis­es that she has always pos­sessed the strength and the right to impose her­self and make choic­es of her own.

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