CFF60 review - WANJA by Carolina Hellsgard

The unsympathetic and downright non-judgemental portrayal of a woman, as she attemts to start all over again. WANJA by CAROLINA HELLSGARD screened at the 60th Cork Film Festival.

WANJA is the type of film that throws us right inside the world of its leading character, without much background info or much of an introduction, aside from an energetic and enigmatic shot of her spaced out self at the back of a car. The titular character is a woman, a former bank robber recently released from a long prison sentence, marked by loneliness but also a focused goal to find work and start anew with a brand new identity. 

WANJA marks the feature debut of its director CAROLINA HELLSGARD, who seems keen on maintaining a certain non-judgemental distance between audience and leading character, that allows her to be all the more real, in an unflinching portrayal of a woman that is far from perfect. 

Nevertheless, there is an admirable feature about her determination on being a better person, even when she finds herself in the most degrading of situations, such as the boss of her pet store accusing her of stealing from the cash register simply due to her controversial history, or after she finds an internship at a stable, being bullied by immature teenage kids, or stumbling all over horse excrements.

WANJA is also carried by an excellent central performance by ANNE RATTE-POLLE, a respected German theatre actor, who carries herself with a masculine type of charisma, something of an older JAMES DEAN or ALAIN DELON - good natured characters with hints of anti-heroes, misunderstood but resilient and full of resources. This particular identity adds an enriching androgynous element in her character that makes it all the more fascinating and even adds a coating of mystery in her actions, as well as her relationship with a much younger girls working at the stables, with whom she develops a strong bond that sometimes resembles that of lovers, and other times the mother and daughter relationship she denied herself through a series of lifestyle choices. 

The camera shots are still and composed. The desolation of the environment of the quiet small town in which the film takes place seems to willfully embrace the anonymity from which Wanja aims to hit the reset button on her life. On top of that HELLSGARD allows her widely character driven story to develop and escalate psychologically by keeping a level of technical intrusion to a minimum. This entails few sharp shots and almost no fancy editing. It also means an almost complete lack of a soundtrack. When the film crosses the line between authenticity and cinema, it is a step that seems pusposefully evident - such as the ducks and the crow she keeps in her small flat, as well as the moments in the rare moments in which the music is indeed used and becomes an integral part of the narrative of the film's present chronology. 

The overall approach may appear cold to the average cinematic viewer, but is can be more appropriately defined as lacking a will to spoonfeed its viewer. HELLSGARD's film is also defined by admirable feminist vibes, stronger than perhaps intended, that mostly arise due to the behaviour of its archetypal masculine characters, who are either nice to the point of being obnoxious, downright exploitational or annoyingly childish.