Pin Cush­ion

Capri­cious teen Iona (Lily New­mark), and her smoth­er­ing moth­er, Lyn (Joan­na Scan­lan), move to a small town for a fresh start in Deb­o­rah Hay­wood intrigu­ing and mov­ing debut fea­ture, Pin Cush­ion. Both opti­misti­cal­ly attempts to fit in to a com­mu­ni­ty which does every­thing it can to repel them. Through the course of this vivid dra­ma, the pair lose con­trol and are dri­ven apart, despite expe­ri­enc­ing sim­i­lar rejection.

The use of famil­iar com­ing-of-age tropes doesn’t pre­vent the film from feel­ing fresh, as it boasts a unique aes­thet­ic and twin plot­lines fol­low­ing moth­er and daugh­ter. The con­se­quences of Iona’s slut sham­ing are par­al­leled with Lyn’s men­tal dete­ri­o­ra­tion at the hands of var­i­ous female bul­lies. Here, Hay­wood proves that this type cru­el­ty thrives in the adult world as much as it does the adolescent.

Most of the film is shot in close prox­im­i­ty to the char­ac­ters, which empha­sis­es their state of claus­tro­pho­bia. The naivety of Haywood’s pro­tag­o­nists leads to their manip­u­la­tion, their dif­fer­ences are mocked and there is even some goth­ic ret­ri­bu­tion thrown in. New­mark mes­meris­es as Iona, per­form­ing her com­plex arc from inno­cence to apa­thy while leav­ing her essen­tial puri­ty in tact. Scan­lan, mean­while, is haunt­ing as the hunch­backed Lyn and it’s inter­est­ing to see the actor in a non-com­ic role that isn’t comedic.

Haywood’s eccen­tric style can be seen in every set­ting and cos­tume, but this nev­er dis­tracts or feel out of place. Instead, it allows the moments in which she does over-indulge in it to feel like a nat­ur­al exten­sion of the char­ac­ters’ quirk­i­ness; in one scene, sparkles cas­cade around a new­ly made-up Iona, in anoth­er a bath­tub is filled with flow­ers. The score is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly ethe­re­al and eerie, just as the sweet­ness of these appear­ances can quick­ly turn sick­ly dur­ing the dark­er moments of the film. In all, a very fine first feature.