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| Ariana Harwicz |
Ariana Harwicz is one of those writers whose intensity reminds us that some of us live what we think, and also that to think is to think against something or someone. This is the source of the vitality that emanates from every one of her responses. Talking with her reminded me that the flowers that bear our names also grow at the extremes, on the edge of the cliff overlooking the abyss.
Rural France is the backdrop for this stark tale, translated from Spanish by Sarah Moses and Carolina Orloff, of a woman driven to the brink of insanity by marriage and motherhood. Argentinian Ariana Harwicz’s unnamed narrator, a “fraud of a country woman”, has followed her idealistic husband out into the sticks, where she does daily battle with loneliness, boredom and the “constant clucking and grousing” of the baby she never really wanted. Other heroines might have turned inward; this one goes on the attack, torturing insects and sleeping with a neighbour as she rages against the limits of acceptability: “I’m a mother, full stop. And I regret it, but I can’t even say that.” There’s a touch of David Lynch to the best moments, such as when she peers dreamily through the window as her child crawls into the fireplace. The lack of character names and sporadic perspective shifts don’t make this an easy read – but then, it isn’t meant to be. “A breath of irrationality had set fire to my existence,” she says, and you can’t help watching through the glass as it burns.
Lawrence excels as a woman whose bipolar disorder is exacerbated by husband Robert Pattinson’s infidelity, with super-strength direction from Lynne Ramsay
Lynne Ramsay brings the Gothic-realist steam heat, some violent shocks and deafening music slams to this movie, adapted by her with co-writers Alice Birch and Enda Walsh from the 2012 novel by Ariana Harwicz. It’s a ferociously intense study of a lonely, passionate woman and her descent into bipolar disorder as she is left alone all day with a new baby in a rambling Montana house originally belonging to her husband’s uncle, who took his own life in a gruesome way that we are not permitted to discover until some way into the movie.
