Wastelands [2020]
Film Review
by JannyC
Alice is lonely and self-isolated; her reverent and compulsive behavior keeps the door shut to her demons. Then, one day her father is thrust back into her life. Wilhelm is suffering from a terminal illness and is completely dependent on his daughter, as time and memory begin to merge into one another, Alice unable to cope allows her lover Tris back in her life. Alice and Tris’ co-dependent relationship begins Alice’s journey of self-destruction and ultimately her self-discovery.
—Kemal Yildirim
Winner of multiple film festival awards, including Best Film at the 2020 Kosice International Monthly Film Festival, as well as Best Feature Film and Best British Film at the Lonely Wolf: London International Film Festival, Wastelands is a drama-thriller-romance with hints of horror, made for mature audiences. I would describe Wastelands as an artistic piece with a touch of M. Night Shyamalan mystery thrill. While the plot is somewhat strange, even bordering into weird, I was not blind to its beauty.
A beautifully shot film, which director Kemal Yildirim opens to sharp-cut imagery which sets us up our introduction of Alice (Natasha Linton), an antisocial and withdrawn woman with a compulsive personality. These sharp cut scenes help us get inside Alice’s troubled state of mind, so as to know who she is with the use of hardly any dialogue. When her stepmother, Dolores (Nicola Wright) waltzes in at her place of work, telling her that her Father, Wilhelm (Sean Botha) is ill and that she is now directly responsible for him, throws Alice for a loop.
Despising her father for marrying Doloris (thus replacing her deceased mother) and denouncing him as her father, Alice finds that she has no choice and reluctantly agrees to take care of him. As she faces her father again, the family demons come back to haunt her. She calls on former lover Tristan (Kemal Yildrim), with whom she has a strange dysfunctional “I want you/I hate you” relationship, for help. His help, largely physical/emotional, seems somewhat vague and only worsens her dysfunction. Either way, his presence probes her to confront her father about how her mother died. This leads to her father giving her a rather cryptic letter from her mother that he had kept for all these years without revealing to her. This is where I think the film falters somewhat. I felt Yildirim should have fed us a bit more crumbs along the way, as the introduction of the letter and the information within it seemed to come out of left field and then the conclusion left me confused to the point I needed to rewind and watch it again because I thought I missed a vital clue.
In the end, though, I’d have to say that Wasteland is poetically beautiful. Directed and written by Yildrim with an additional story by Mol Smith, it is no surprise Kemal won the Best Emerging Filmmaker Award at Lonely Wolf International Film Festival 2021. A film is not merely merited by a director alone, though. The cast’s performances bring the director’s vision to life. Natasha Linton’s performance is a standout. Her portrayal was brave and intense as the unsettled Alice. She was so believable that it resulted in her receiving the Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role Award at Lonely Wolf that same year.
Sean Botha brings pain and tragedy to the role of Alice’s father, Wilhelm, who suffers from debilitating Huntington’s Disease. Yildirim himself performs well as Tristan, Alice’s on-again, off-again lover. His performance helped give more insight into Alice’s disconcerted mind as he seems to desperately try to help her. This makes Yildirim a triple threat as writer, director and actor, which is no mean feat, but seems to have been done the right way here.
Wasteland is not at all a waste, but a well made film which is definitely worth watching.
My rating: 7 out of 10.
