29/39
My body is a continent
Synopsis
After living life on the edge in London, Rona tries to come to terms with her troubled past. Hoping to heal, she returns to the wild beauty of the Orkney Islands in Scotland, where she grew up. It marks the first time a film has been shot on the island of Orkney, Papa Westray. Rona: In grand moments, in the fresh air and freedom of the hills, I study my personal geology.
And when I blink, the sun blinks
I grind my teeth in my sleep like tectonic plates. My breath pushes the clouds across the sky and the waves roll onto the shore in time with my beating heart. The headlands of the islands rise above the sea like my limbs in the bathtub. My freckles are famous landmarks and my tears are rivers.
Lightning strikes every time I sneeze
And when I orgasm, there is an earthquake. One With the Wind, composed by John Gürtler and Jan Miserre. If you’re a fan of the adaptable Saoirse Ronan, you’ll probably love this – she plays almost everything in the role of “Rona”. She’s returned to her mother’s home in Orkney to recover from a rather torrid period of drink and drugs in London.
Can she stay the course or is a relapse inevitable?
The timelines are interwoven to feed us with the causes of her current situation while looking at her own efforts to get – and stay – clean. Of course, there are domestic issues at home too, with her father suffering from bipolar disorder and her mother having turned to religion, which adds to the turmoil in her life. Eventually, she takes a job working on a remote island for the RSPB trying to find an example of the once abundant, but now rare, corn quail. With the mood closing in on her small country home and her determination to get well again despite family pressures, the woman has her work cut out for her.
It’s a strong effort from Ronan here, and Andrew Dillane also delivers quite effectively as her father – especially as the film gathers momentum and the characters develop more fully
The cinematography of this sometimes beautiful, sometimes bleak environment adds nicely to the overarching sense of claustrophobia as the story unfolds, her self-imposed isolation flying in the face of her naturally more gregarious personality. It doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the treatment techniques and struggles involved here, but it does provide us with a powerfully character-driven drama that must have cost a fortune in hair dye and offers no rosy solutions.