A single woman in her early thirties, Asia (Alena Yiv) is trying to maintain her independence while keeping her teenage daughter Vika (Shira Haas) at bay. When she is not working as a nurse, she enjoys a night out, or ducks away for an affair with one of her colleagues.
Asia is living life the way she wants it.
And then everything turns upside down…
I had a conversation recently with someone about the book/movie Wonder. They wanted to know why I had not seen it.
I do not like to watch movies involving people with disabilities - most of them treat disabled characters as signifiers rather than human beings.
My least favourite trope is a disabled character who exists as a catalyst for the main character’s transformation - mostly by dying.
I made an exemption for Asia because it starred Shira Haas from Unorthodox. I should have stayed the course.
Asia falls so squarely into the scenario I just sketched I am not even that angry. It’s just so cliche.
This thing won awards - I can see why: it features an non-disabled actor as a disabled person, and the movie ends with their character dying. It will probably get an Oscar nom.
Ugh.
I spent the whole movie waiting for a swerve, a subversion of the formula - but no.
These movies, and these kinds of representations, must be reviewed, and they must be critiqued. It is important. Maybe not as important as accessible buildings, education, health and employment - but these stories are everywhere for a reason. Disabled people are generally still seen as other, whether as figures of inspiration, pity or caution.
They are rarely treated as people.
Haas is a great actress, and she does what she can to make Vika live, but she is constrained by the stereotypical role.
It is a pity because in its early stages the film is intriguing, as we get a sense of the title character’s life. Asia had a child young and the movie takes time to show how she is somewhat disconnected from her daughter. Their dynamic is closer to sisters or roommates - Asia and her daughter seem to be on their own, with their own spaces and friends away from each other. I do not recall the characters sharing the same frame for a while. The filmmakers unite them by cross-cutting between them in completely separate spaces.
But once Vika’s illness takes centre stage, the movie becomes depressingly familiar. It also foregrounds how little agency Vika has.
In an attempt to serve her daughters’ wishes, Asia gives her caregiver tacit permission to have sex with Vika.
My problem with this scene, and the way the action unfolded, was that Vika is unaware of what is going on. Throughout the movie, it feels like Asia is taking on major decisions that involve her child without consultation.
On top of this, the filmmakers do not deal with any ethical concerns for the caregiver. While he does leave, there is an earlier sequence in which he makes non-verbal overtures towards Vika. Because no one talks to her about it, and the way this scene is framed (a mid shot on Vika in bed, with the caregiver mostly out of shot), I do not think it plays the way the filmmakers intended - it just visualises how dis-empowered Vika is.
It just feels like this movie wants to present a portrait of a complicated, flawed woman, but at the expense of the portrayal of her daughter.
The only thing I kind of liked was that while Vika does not want die a virgin, she turns down an offer because it is based on pity rather than affection. There is a flicker of agency, but she gets little else through the rest of the movie.
The acting is good, and some of the cultural context is interesting, but the turn Asia takes at the climax is so depressingly familiar, it felt like a pitch for gravitas that the movie did not need. It also feels like a punishment for Asia - this woman who has spent her life avoiding responsibility now has literal responsibility for her daughter’s life. The end.
Thinking about this movie, I could not shake off the feeling that it wants to punish its main character - she is flawed, but the finale is so arbitrary and horrifying that it feels like payback for the character’s various infractions. Combined with the familiarity of the daughter’s storyline, the blunt finality of the ending feels like another familiar play on convention - denying the character release and leaving the viewer to marinate on what she has done.
But I did not feel like it worked. Or maybe that ending was the movie’s message - this woman is finally forced to make a tough choice. But even taking that scene as a conclusion, I felt the lack of Vika’s input. I felt like this ending needed some kind of set-up - it also felt out of place for the portrayal of their relationship.
Going back to the movie as a whole, the movie is mostly aligned to Asia’s POV, but Vika and their relationship are meant to be a major part of the story. It felt out of character for Asia (movie and character) to make this final decision alone. It just reinforces how Vika feels like a plot device for advancing Asia’s journey.
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