You know a director has done something out of the ordinary when a Cate Blanchett performance is labelled a potential distraction.
Yet such was some of the feedback for Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy after it premiered in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section on Friday.
The film stars newcomer Aswan Reid as a nine-year-old Aboriginal orphan boy in 1940s Australia who arrives in the dead of night at a remote monastery run by renegade nun Sister Eileen, played by Blanchett. A series of strange occurrences involving the new visitor, including the marks of stigmata, leads to questions about the nature of faith being instilled at the time.
Joining the pair in the cast are Deborah Mailman and Wayne Blair as well as Shane Brady, Tyrique Brady, Laiken Woolmington, Kailem Miller, Kyle Miller, Tyzailin Roderick, and Tyler Spencer.
Blanchett produces with Andrew Upton for Dirty Films, working with co-producer Georgie Pym, Kath Shelper for Scarlett Pictures and Lorenzo De Maio of De Maio Entertainment.
It is the Oscar-winner’s “undimmed magnetism as a performer” that Variety‘s Guy Lodge notes “occasionally threatens to distract from the plainer ideological matters at hand”, going to praise Reid for providing a contrasting presence in being “as silent and penetratingly watchful as she is fretfully busy”.
David Rooney made a similar point in his review for The Hollywood Reporter, where he wrote that while Blanchett was always a “compelling, full-tilt performer”, the spiral of her character in response to the arrival of the titular character became “almost a distraction from the more moving part of the story — the boy’s navigation of this unfamiliar world and its rules, attempting to find a place in it without surrendering his sense of himself”.
Both Lodge and Rooney were however unreserved in their praise of the film’s aesthetics and Thornton’s decisions as a writer, director and cinematographer.
“Thornton, for his part, balances the film’s more cluttered complexities with a confident visual serenity,” Lodge wrote.
“As DP, his stark, immaculate compositions stress the dominant lines of the natural world — clean shafts of scorching sunlight, an infinite horizon — over the small, intricate architecture of human occupation, washing everything in earthy ochres and burnt khakis.”
For Rooney, the director’s “command of visual storytelling has possibly never been as striking” as in the setting of the film.
“Frequently, the rolling hills and wheat fields, the harvest scenes, shots of a fire tearing through crops, or even a steam train chugging across the landscape seem a direct tip of the hat to the descriptive beauty of Néstor Almendros’ influential work on Days of Heaven.”
Thornton was also commended by Deadline‘s Stephanie Bunbury for his nuanced approach to the subject matter.
“This is not just a film about a boy with magical fingers,” she wrote.
“Nor is it a film for people who cringe at the mention of religion or who regard faith in a god as risible; the film is not a declaration of belief, but it does take belief seriously. With few words, Thornton layers complex metaphysical ideas that can never be resolved.”
The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw was less kind in his review of the film, which he didn’t believe had the power of Thornton’s earlier films Sweet Country or his debut Samson And Delilah.
“After some robust storytelling at the start; the film drifts into a series of images and moods which perhaps don’t deliver as much impact as intended,” he wrote.
“Cate Blanchett herself naturally has an imperious control of any scene she’s in but we don’t gain access to her inner life and backstory in the way I was hoping. A minor film from Thornton.”
Cannes Film Festival runs May 16 – 27.