“Portraits of Dangerous Women” review – Dog car crash sparks confusing and strange drama | film

TIts astonishingly strange and lifeless drama comes from the Swiss filmmaker Pascal Bergamin, who lives in Zurich and London and has published several English-language works in the past. This film has a rural British setting with British characters played by British actors, but it seems like something translated by Google from another project, perhaps with a European setting; There is a repeated and strangely haunting allusion to two art dealers from the German city of Cottbus, mysterious figures who never appear on screen and whose existence serves no satisfying or interesting purpose.

But this objection could be raised against every single character in the film. A strange – and strangely unconvincing – event brings three women together. Steph (Jeany Spark) is an unhappy teacher; Tina (Tara Fitzgerald) is a mysteriously overqualified janitor at Steph’s school and Ashley (Yasmin Monet Prince) is a troubled, bright teenager with artistic interests. While driving her car and arguing with her father, Jon (Mark Lewis Jones), who is sitting in the passenger seat, Steph comes across a dog – who was also somehow, perhaps immediately before or immediately after, hit by a second car, driven by Tina was driven; and so the very first important moment of the film is muddled and duplicated. On the side of the road, Ashley claims she is the dog’s owner and is angry and distressed.

This whole fiasco supposedly brings the three women together in a 93-minute non-story that is superficially eventful but hamstrung by its utter implausibility and tedium, a narrative that seems to rely on a series of pipe dreams rather than believable events. The acting isn’t bad at all and I should say that Lewis Jones brings confidence and warmth to his role. But he, like everyone else, is disappointed by a script that is completely unconvincing, like a Sunday teatime TV drama written by a Martian.