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BERLINALE 2023 Panorama

Review: Silver Haze

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- BERLINALE 2023: Dutch filmmaker Sacha Polak reunites with Vicky Knight, the lead actress from Dirty God, in this romantic tale derived partly from the latter’s life

Review: Silver Haze
Esmé Creed-Miles and Vicky Knight in Silver Haze

Silver Haze [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
comes from writer-director Sacha Polak, who is Dutch, yet it’s set largely in East London and is steeped in a distinctly British atmosphere, reminding us of earlier European directors who filmed and sometimes understood the USA better than it did itself. Following up on Dirty God [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sacha Polak
film profile
]
, which also featured the same impressive non-professional actress Vicky Knight, Polak gets so much dead-on in atmospheric terms, starting from how uncannily its pale, metallic blue colour scheme evokes the film’s title, and also the arrow-sharp tension of its ensemble scenes. Yet especially as it reaches its second half, all the seductive craft in the world can’t save a script that often feels like the remnants of several first drafts and emergency rewrites.

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Polak has now moved from provocative Dutch features (some of which were previously feted at the Berlinale) to grimy British cinema, and is now peppering her CV with stints on expensive streaming shows for platforms such as Amazon Prime and Paramount+. Silver Haze, which premiered in the Berlinale’s Panorama, was one of the more highly anticipated titles in that section, with Knight’s follow-up role reversing the sad fate of many eye-catching non-professional performers, where they’re often left in the dust as their directors move up to higher echelons.

After Dirty God incorporated Knight’s facial scarring into a devised backstory inspired by a recent spate of horrifying acid attacks in the UK, often by vindictive men against their female partners, Silver Haze takes its lead from her own life, where she survived a house fire. After fascinatingly tweaking notions of body positivity and even voyeurism in the prior film, this plot background provides a creaky dramatic motive to uncover responsibility for an alleged arson attack, which occurred as she slept above their family’s pub.

Knight plays Franky, an able and compassionate hospital nurse, who’s bold and strong-willed, even as she weathers occasional “What happened to you?” remarks from her own patients ailing in their beds. One, Florence (Esmé Creed-Miles), is recovering from a suicide attempt and, in a turn early viewers have greeted with some unfair cynicism, eventually welcomes Franky into her life as a lover, providing her with a safe haven at her own Southend-on-Sea home, after the latter faces homophobia from her family (with whom she recently lived herself).

From this point on in the narrative, engagement and cogency sadly take a nosedive, as Polak can’t seem to figure out the plot architecture whereby Franky has to further contend with Florence’s abiding mental-health struggles, yet also return to London for an appropriately cathartic showdown with her estranged father’s mistress and now spouse, the subject of local rumours for her involvement in the fire. In a further strand that does mean well but creates an awkward shift in the point of view, Franky becomes a surrogate nurse figure to Florence’s cancer-stricken grandmother Alice (Angela Bruce), leaving her to keep house as her now-ex’s acting career suddenly takes off in London.

All disappointments aside, Silver Haze can virtuously be seen, as in instrumental music-practice terms, as a bit of a dramatic finger exercise for Polak, continuing to create fine showcases for Knight and revelling in the joy of a mutually enriching collaboration.

Silver Haze is a Dutch-UK production, staged by Emu Films and Viking Film. New Europe Film Sales is handling the world sales.

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