Nocebo: Film Review
I really enjoyed Lorcan Finnegan‘s weird and mysterious Vivarium so I had to check out his next movie, Nocebo. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a fan.
The film stars Eva Green as Christine, a high-powered fashion designer with a successful children’s clothing brand. One day, she gets a phone call delivering bad news – but we don’t hear the message. The story then jumps to eight months later, when Eva has a mysterious illness – she can barely work, suffers memory loss, sleeps with an oxygen mask etc. What is ailing her? Is it all in her head, like her husband Felix (Mark Strong) suggests, or is something supernatural at play? Eva hires a Vietnamese woman named Diana (Chai Fonacier) to help around the house, but are Diana’s intentions pure?
Nocebo is a film where it all comes together and makes sense in the end. There are hints about where it’s going along the way but the true story isn’t revealed until the climax. The shroud of mystery is finally lifted, everything becomes clear and the pay-off is satisfying. The reveal made the story suddenly seem really interesting and the very end is dark, horrifying and leaves a lasting image.
Given the impactful ending, it’s a shame the rest of the movie is so infuriating. You have to watch so much bizarre content to get to the satisfying finale. I said WTF so many times! Because it’s all so mysterious – you don’t know if it’s real or if she’s lost her mind – it makes it hard to care for what’s going on because you have so little to connect with or grab onto.
Green does well as this haunted, traumatised woman who is slowly descending into madness, but the star of the show is Fonacier, who gives a subtle performance as Diana but there is more to her than meets the eye. Strong has a flimsy “husband” role and mostly just reacts to his wife’s madness.
Nocebo came to a surprisingly strong conclusion that really stuck with me, but as a whole, it was too weird for my liking.
In cinemas from Friday 9th December