15/08/2024 - Saulė Bliuvaitė’s coming-of-age tale and debut feature navigates teenage insecurities about body image amidst dreams and realities in a dilapidated Lithuanian mining town

Ieva Rupeikaite (left) and Vesta Matulyte in Toxic

It is rare for a film with an even narrative to hold viewers' attention from beginning to end. With Toxic [+see also:
trailer
interview: Directors Talks @ European …
interview: Saulė Bliuvaitė
film profile], this happens miraculously, perhaps thanks to the genuine close-up portrayals of both female protagonists – each of whom is a narrative in herself – and the growing affectionate relationship between them. What begins as impulsive enmity, like beasts demarcating their territory, evolves into inseparability. Equally eye-popping is the film's poetic way of capturing the attempts to dream in an era meant for dreaming, but in a place devoid of departure points. Based on Lithuanian newcomer Saulė Bliuvaitė’s personal adolescent experiences, her debut feature has just celebrated its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, making her the youngest director to compete in the International Competition.

Thirteen-year-old Marija (Vesta Matulytė), forcibly entrusted to her grandmother in the remote countryside by her mother, who has no room for her, is new at school. She is mocked for her congenital limp and childish swimsuit, and to top it off, someone has stolen her jeans from the pool locker room. Such an opening scene suggests a conflict based on bullying, but the actual bully soon appears disguised as a tempter. A suspicious modelling school is popular among the schoolgirls, who are willing to do anything it takes to meet insane body-weight criteria – skipping meals, inducing vomiting, ingesting tapeworm eggs – and to find money to pay for a required photo session that promises careers in Paris and New York. The jeans thief, Kristina (Ieva Rupeikaitė), is scammed into participating in the scheme, and despite their initial confrontation, which includes a fist fight in the mud, Marija sees Kristina as a kindred spirit and enrols herself in the modelling course, bringing them closer together. The comforting course leader convinces Marija that they can fix her gait, and suddenly, her limp becomes less pronounced as she is accepted into the community. When her mother unexpectedly comes to take her back, Marija doesn't even want to hear it – she feels that she already belongs to this place that everyone is trying to escape from.

“Toxic” is a top buzzword in the vocabulary of millennials and Generation Z, who are statistically more prone to mental-health issues and self-harm, perhaps owing to the omnipresent aggressive media landscape affecting their body image and self-esteem. Born in 1994, Bliuvaitė stands at the threshold of both generations, so her take on the issue is genuine, based on firsthand experiences. Beyond food, parents, school and relationships, toxicity can also stem from the overall surrounding emptiness and lack of meaningful life prospects, which, during the fragile adolescent years, can easily be replaced by superficial stimuli provided by external “benefactors” (such as the modelling agency in question). An environment that fails to motivate young people to develop an enriching inner world automatically poisons the outer one. With a searching camera and particular attention paid to reflecting the emotional frequencies of the characters – not just through their interactions, but also through their silent, individual turmoil – the director intuitively captures vibrations that cannot be verbalised and that only imagery can convey. This makes the film mesmerisingly cinematic, in the most intimate sense of the term.

Toxic was produced by Lithuania’s Akis Bado. Its international sales are handled by Spain’s Bendita Film Sales.