A standout at the Locarno competition, Saulė Bliuvaitė's sharp debut sees two 13-year-old aspiring models put their bodies through hell — and their souls through something even darker.
The most hated countries
The mean girls of your average Hollywood teen movie wouldn’t last a morning in the unforgiving playground of “Toxic,” where economic exploitation and unforgiving body-image standards rule both bullies and their prey. Set in an industrial Lithuanian town where even the asphalt has seen better days, Saulė Bliuvaitė’s impressively tough-talking debut is uncompromising in its depiction of the punishment and self-abuse endured by girls who enroll in a fly-by-night modeling academy—where the vague promise of escape to pretty much anywhere is enough to motivate terrifying extremes of eating disorders and body modification. Sobering, but not without glimpses of tenderness and humor as female friendship takes root in a hopeless place, this Locarno competition entry could expect a healthy festival run, with interest from edgier arthouse distributors.
“Toxic” promises something serious from its opening scene, as 13-year-old Marija (Vesta Matulytė) stands alone, tensely trembling in a bathing suit, in a high school locker room as her classmates verbally assault her—most viciously, the cripple she’s had since birth. DP Vytautas Katkus’s high-angle camera has the effect of pinning down this already fragile figure like a specimen in a petri dish, though Bliuvaitė isn’t always likely to advocate such forensic detachment. The film’s alternation between cold calm and kinetic movement roughly corresponds to Marija’s wavering sense of self, while occasional shifts to the heightened, languid mise-en-scène of music videos mirror a future she and her peers have imagined for themselves.
Marija is new to this nameless town, a dead-end collection of gravel lots, cinder blocks, and prefabricated houses, where her volatile mother has sent her to live with her unassuming grandmother, a florist. Friendless and bored, she has few social options beyond confronting her tormentors in the hopes of improving their grades. After a brutal fight over a stolen pair of jeans, she finally finds an ally in the petite, pointy-haired blonde halberd Kristina (Ieva Rupeikaitė), who can recognize what the other appearance-fixated bullies are loath to admit about Marija: She’s tall and physically striking, in a way that can open doors for working-class girls with no clear prospects. Inner beauty doesn’t count for much in this scene, but a simple reminder that she’s pretty is about the warmest gesture Marija has ever known.
