Publisher: CinemaSerf March 20, 2024
To be honest, I was a little disappointed with this story. It's clear that Cynthia Erivo has put her heart and soul into it, but the story just has too many holes in it for me. We first meet her "Jacqueline" character as she wanders the streets of a small greek island town pinching the sugar sachets. Quickly, we discover that she has barely more than the clothes she stands up in, sleeps on a blanket in a sheltered cave and gets about blagging trips on tourist buses. Via flashbacks we are told of her privileged background in her native Liberia and of a love affair with a British woman (Honor Swinton Byrne) in London, and what's clear is that neither idyll seems destined to endure. The former, indeed, is played out across the course of the film in a rather brutally predicable fashion. Fortunately, she encounters tour guide "Callie" (Alia Shawkat) who's getting a bit fed up with the day-in day-out routine with her elderly visitors who just want to say they've "done" the place. Gradually the two start to bond and maybe there's a little light at the end of the tunnel for "Jacqueline"? Both women deliver well enough here, but there are just too many elements missing or under-developed. How did she get here for a start? Too much of her trauma has to be assumed or guessed at and not that I wanted graphic scenes, I did want to know a little more about just what made "Jacqueline" tick. The production is all adequate, and for a while the repetitive photography serves well to illustrate the dead-end nature of her existence, but I just think this missed an opportunity to develop the story of "Jacqueline" a bit more comprehensively.