Motherhood is a beast in first time feature filmmaker Andrea Corsini’s lush Italian psychological horror stunner, Ferine, celebrating its international premiere at this year’s Fantasia. Bolstered by a captivating lead performance from Oddity’s Carolyn Bracken and an unforgettable score from the fresh out of retirement Pino Donaggio, Ferine is set to make waves on the festival circuit with its fearsome look at what it takes to be a mother.
Art collector Irene (Bracken) is finally ready to leave the fast pace of the art world behind and settle into life as a mother. Unable to conceive on her own, she reaches out to Rosa (Paola Lavini) to arrange a private adoption at her secretive maternity clinic. The process doesn’t turn out exactly as Irene planned, leading to a devastating tragedy that shakes her to her core and unlocks a primal instinct that cannot be quelled.
Meanwhile, a rare jaguar in transit to wealthy collector Dama (Caroline Goodall) has escaped into the nearby Italian countryside. Dama seeks to recapture the beast as it leaves a traile of dead animals – and worse – in its wake. When these two stories collide, it will be a battle of wills that will test all parties involved with only one victor left to walk away from the fight.
Drawing from the storied history of Italy’s baroque horror past, Ferine feels like the kind of film that is rarely attempted anymore. Impeccably crafted at every level and powered by Bracken’s preternatural performance as a woman broken by tragedy and rebuilt into something somehow beyond human, the film goes to the kind of extremes more common in Italy’s ‘80s shockers, with the kind of polish that is usually reserved for gilded period drama.
Much like its festival contemporary, Nightborn, Ferine looks at motherhood in instinctual terms, not necessarily the glossy civilized ones to which we’ve become accustomed. Where that film explored the physical dependence of mother and child, Ferine is obsessed with the psychic bond between mother and child and the lizard brain activation that drives the fiercest of maternal instincts.
It is a profoundly sincere film, even when the actions of its characters are almost comically melodramatic, lending to the earnestness that drives Bracken’s astonishing performance throughout. Somewhere between Isabelle Adjani’s iconic performance in Possession and Pollyanna McIntosh’s feral turn in The Woman, Bracken’s Irene straddles the line between civility and chaos with unsettling ease. As the film progresses, Irene’s transformation from staid cultural stalwart to ravenous, animalistic protector is one of the most impressively unhinged performances of the year.
For all of Ferine’s straight-faced dramatization of its unabashedly weird and ferocious subject matter, it never shies away from the kind of gleeful splatter that put Italy on the map from the late ‘70s through the early ‘90s. Corsini douses the screen in buckets of blood, much of it glowing that unnatural red that remains a signifier of Italy’s national cinema to fans around the world. The film joyously provokes at every opportunity, presenting the kind of on-screen transgression that really gets genre film fans’ juices flowing.
While Bracken’s otherworldly embodiment of Irene’s descent/ascent to primordial motherhood is the clear shining star of the film, Corsini’s supporting cast are equally adept to their roles. Goodall in particular truly embodies a kind of Amazonian alpha female in her role as the obscenely wealthy exotic animal collector, Dama. She stalks through the film with a kid of cold intensity that perfectly balances Irene’s untamed energy. It’s a duel for the ages, and one that is both slightly predictable and utterly satisfying in its climax.
Corsini’s opulent vision is expertly supported by his behind-the-scenes crew who make this mid-budget film look like a million bucks (or the modern equivalent thereof). From the brutalist mansion in Villa Gontero that Irene calls home to the sprawling grounds of Borno Cornalese that house Dama’s exotic animal compound, the locations turn every shot into a painting. Donaggio’s score announces itself from the very first frames in a way that film music seems fearful of doing these days, making itself as much of a fearsome character as Irene herself. All of it captured in its breathtaking glory by cinematographer Fabrizio La Palombara, whose ability to modulate between instinctual brutality and pastoral serenity adds so much to the dichotomy between gentility and savagery that Ferine is exploring.
One of the most exhilarating debut features in a long time and easily one of the year’s most impressive horror features, Ferine is a wild beast of a film that will hopefully stalk its way onto cinema screens before too long. Powered by a performance by Carolyn Bracken that is proudly untethered from the bounds of modern femininity to something more bestial, Ferine is a shout to the world that cinema cannot be tamed and must be unleashed to cross boundaries if it is to remain a vital part of culture. Magnificent.