Womb (2010) Review: Oedipus by the Beach

Warning:

Having just finished the 2010 indie film Womb, I'm left with an odd, quiet poignancy, not just by the ending of the film, as is the case with many other movies, but by the film as a whole.

Directed by Hungarian Benedek Fliegauf and starring Eva Green and Matt Smith (who was the reason I watched this film in the first place; I was intrigued by Eleven not being Eleven), this film explores the controversial topic of incest, interwoven with the themes of cloning, loving, losing and letting go.

Summary: Rebecca (Eva Green) and Tommy (Matt Smith) are childhood friends and, possibly, sweethearts, who are separated when Rebecca goes to live with her mother in Tokyo. Twelve years later, she returns to the beach by which he lives, and they pick up where they left off. Disastrously, he is killed by a van on their road trip, all because she had to pee. Struck by her sudden loss, Rebecca decides to clone Tommy, and gives birth to him and brings him up. In the end, he finds out that he's a clone and, after consummating their relationship in a fit of angst, he thanks her for his life and leaves her. It takes a bit of linking, but we figure out that the beginning of the movie is the end: Rebecca is pregnant with the second Tommy's child.

As horrifying as it may sound to the more conservative, it's actually a very well done film. The incest is handled tastefully, with slightly unsettling moments of sexual tension, and quietly, and the one sex scene between Rebecca and the second Tommy is implicit and only suggestive. The child actors are, in their innocent ways, stunning, and morph well into their older characters. The cinematography is wonderfully done, with many spectacular shots of the beach and the house that reflects Rebecca's isolation and loneliness, despite her son/lover, and touches the viewer's heart.

And, of course, the performance by Green and Smith leave nothing to be desired. At first I thought Green's Rebecca was rather too understated, with her quiet tones and many glances, but as I gradually eased into the indie vibe, I found myself enthralled by how much she conveys through her eyes--her conflicting desires towards Tommy, her unwillingness to accept Monica, grown-up Second Tommy's girlfriend, and her own grief, even after so many years of having a second chance at being in Tommy's life.

Matt Smith, although having a somewhat underwritten role--what with half the time spent with a young Tommy--gives a touching performance, first as Rebecca's childhood friend grown up, then as a carefree Second Tommy and, finally, as a Tommy torn when finding out about his true identity. He handles the heavy emotions of his character very well, and manages to portray how the two Tommys are, at the same time, same but different.

As for my own feelings, I was mesmerised by the whole understated tone of the film. I'm not usually one to go for the short, choppy scenes and few lines, and the only other indie film I've watched is Winter's Bones, but the actors and the plot won me over. The entire thing was so quiet that the few and brief moments of rage, mostly from Smith, were powerful, and the abundant meaningful glances from Green even more so. I loved how one scene cut to another and then flowed into the next in the beginning, and the killing off of Smith's character had me clutching my pillow with sympathy for Rebecca.

I also admired the use of foreshadowing in the film. At the beginning, where young First Tommy calls Rebecca on the day before she leaves to tell her he'll send her off, he's cut off abruptly, the reason for which we're never told. It seems eerie, somehow, when you look back at it. One moment he's there, the next he's suddenly gone. Something that happens three times in the film. Plus, there was this part where young Second Tommy is playing a computer game. He says to his mum, "I keep dying." She replies, "Try again." A well put-across point. Then there's another scene where he dies in the game again, and his character falls endlessly off a cliff just as it manages to climb up it. Suggestive.

Now, I'm all for controversial topics, and I'm definitely not faint-hearted about them, but the one scene that truly disturbed me was the one where young Second Tommy is mock-wrestling with his mother, and then lies on top of her and says, "Now I can do anything I want with you," to which Rebecca replies, "Go ahead."

Image taken from Andrea from Germany, whose review of Womb can be found here.

The scene, strangely infused with sexual tension, mirrors (say "foreshadows" if you will) the one with the older Second Tommy.

My only concern about this scene is that it is with a young boy about ten years old. Surely it's not healthy to feel sexual tension with a child. Nevertheless, we feel it there very strongly, and it's certainly provocative. Which serves the purpose of the film.

A review at Hollywood Reporter calls Womb "a sappy drama about human cloning that has no point of view at all," but in my opinion, the point of the film is not to have an opinion, but to arouse one, or, which is more likely, several. Additionally, I can't help but feel that the film isn't so much about human cloning--which, oddly and ironically, is more of a sub-plot--than about letting go. Or not being able to do so. One tends to question Rebecca's motive for cloning Tommy. Is it to give Tommy a "second chance" at life, or to give herself a second chance with him? Or is it simply because she can't stand the thought that a friend, a lover whom she hasn't had the chance to properly live out her life with, won't be around anymore?

It might be all those reasons. But one might ask--is raising your sweetheart as your child the best way of reclaiming that lost love? That's where the question of cloning comes in. And, with it, Rebecca's conflicting feelings about him as her son and as her lover.

There is a sub-theme about clones, called "Copies" in the film, being ostracised by the community, something Second Tommy, oblivious to his own origins, partakes in as an unthinking child. It's because of this that Rebecca shields her son even more, and the scene where several mothers inform her of why she shouldn't invite Copies into her home is pulled off very well, with Green's tormented eyes and strained face conveying her feelings strongly. Personally, that scene evoked a strong sense of indignation in me.

Then there's the big elephant in the room--incest.

We all know there's a big elephant in the room.

For fellow Whovians out there.

You might argue that it's not technically incest, since Rebecca isn't biologically Tommy's mother, but the fact remains that she mothered him, brought him up as her own, and I see that as a firm mother-child bond. It certainly makes one think about issues usually pushed to the back of the mind, and that's the impact the film leaves on you.

The end, however, is where the whole letting go thing comes full circle. Having had her life with Tommy, Rebecca watches calmly as he takes his bags and walk out the door, after thanking her. Then he walks away, and we cut to the shot of his figure disappearing into the distance, leaving the vast, empty beach and the little house on their own, with Rebecca alone again.

It's not a film for everyone, that's for sure, and if you can't be open-minded about such topics, then you'd better not watch it. But in the end, it's a thought-provoking and intensely moving film, and its haunting beauty will linger long after the screen fades to black.