Pearl (2022)

Plot of Pearl: It is 1918 in Texas. Pearl is a young woman, born of German immigrants, and married to a young man who is away in the war. Her mother, a martinet, expects her to look after her paralysed father and also the animals in their small farm. Her only escape is to the cinema in the local town where she goes on her bicycle. Early on she kills a goose and feeds it to the crocodile which lives in their pond. On her way back from the cinema one day she takes a scarecrow down off a scaffold, steals its hat and, astride it, excites herself. A friend tells her about an audition for young dancers in the town and she determines to go. Her mother argues with her saying that she is not safe away from the farm, and in a subsequent argument her dress catches fire, Pearl leaving her for dead, and going to the cinema where she has sex with the projectionist. When the projectionist takes her home the following morning and he attempts to drive away she flies into a rage and kills him with a pitchfork. And that’s not the end of it.

Content: Pearl and the projectionist watch a bit of a porn film, which includes indistinct nudity and sex. They also drink a bit of alcohol. She, fully clad, rubs herself against a prone scarecrow and seems to climax. The mother is unpleasant, the father almost inert, but he manages to show fear when things go to hell. Pearl skewers a goose and feeds it to the crocodile. She leaves her badly burnt mother to die and kills the projectionist with the pitchfork, afterwards pushing his car into the lake. The audition takes place with Pearl imagining a back up of dancers. She kills another young woman with an axe and makes up a dinner scene with her dead father and mother and a rotten roast pig in place when her husband returns.

A View: I had only my little knowledge of the sort of parts Mia Goth takes when I watched this outing and was impressed. It cost $1 million and seems to have made money, although not a lot, possibly due to limited publicity. Once we see how things are going, and the fact that as her mother predicted Pearl is a nut, the atmosphere created is suitably tense. So definitely a watch if you like that sort of thing.

Fun Fact: The director used the film crew in New Zealand from Avatar II, who were already fully quarantined during the Covid epidemic.