“September Says is an oddly arresting debut for Labed, which promises an even stranger outing should she choose to direct a more adult story.”

For those who have read Daisy Johnson’s 2020 novel Sisters, it is easy to see the attraction that caused Greek-French actress Ariane Labed to adapt it for her directorial debut, September Says. As an actress Labed is no stranger to off-beat, unsettling roles (two of them in her husband Yorgos Lanthimos’ films, Alps and The Lobster), and ‘unsettling’ is the right way to describe Johnson’s tale about a toxic, too-close relationship between two teenage sisters in Oxford, England. Hinging on a late twist that was easier to see coming in the novel, the sense of dread that hangs over the film almost suffocates it, with Labed keeping her cards close to her chest for a bit too long. But a healthy dose of refreshing humor and a steady directorial hand that manages to cram a lot of incident into a relatively short runtime without feeling overstuffed make September Says a promising debut for fans of the off-kilter.

September (Pascale Kann) and July (Mia Tharia) are inseparable sisters, to the point that it is hard to say where one ends and the other begins. Which isn’t to say that they aren’t different: September is the aggressive, dominating force in their relationship; July the more withdrawn, shy follower. Outcasts at school, the two escape into their own world, a world even their artist mother Sheela (Rakhee Thakrar) isn’t always a part of. The gullible July being lured into revealing a bit too much of herself to her bullying classmates leads to a violent but murky incident that causes Sheela to pull the girls out of school and move to an old summer home in Ireland. This opens up old wounds for Sheela and widens an already growing rift between September and an increasingly more independent July. An encounter with a group of other teens, one of whom shows romantic interest in July, puts the relationship between the siblings to the ultimate test, culminating in a shocking reveal.

Visually Labed does not imprint a strong directorial signature on September Says, although its style is hard to pin down. What she does retain from the novel is the gothic eeriness of the story. A dark secret, a hidden past, a troubled mother, creaking floorboards; the hallmarks of the genre are all there. From the first frame there is a sense something is off, even though what exactly is ‘off’ shifts in the film’s final act. What drives the narrative for most of its runtime is the unhealthy dynamic between the two girls. The domineering September demanding that the girls celebrate their birthdays on her date of birth is the least problematic part of it; the fact that they share a phone, depriving the timid July of any privacy, is far more shocking. Once the trio have settled in their new home Sheela gets a voice of her own (quite literally, as her thoughts guide us, hilariously, through a sexual encounter with a man she picked up in the local pub), although her character and past trauma are underdeveloped and have little impact on the main narrative of her daughters. The broader humor of her scenes is welcome though, as the undercurrent of sardonic comedy that is present in the sisters’ arc, strongly reminding us of Labed’s husband’s earlier work, can be grating and inorganic.

To bring Lanthimos into the conversation is perhaps inevitable and not fair to Labed, but it is clear that September Says is a film that will alienate parts of it audience the way Alps or Dogtooth did. Labed’s framing and blocking may differ (her husband is clearly the more visual director in their marriage), but the tone of the film is not far off. There is a certain lack of naturalism that is an acquired taste, something that Lanthimos has polished over the years to reach a larger audience, and ‘enjoyable’ is definitely not how one would label September Says. Yet the film never ceases to fascinate, with its strange and eerie world and with it being unpredictable almost to a fault. It also doesn’t fall into any lulls during its entire runtime, which is a credit to Labed’s direction. Although the girls do down a bottle of wine over the course of the film and there is sex, the limits of depicting the world of teenagers still exist, but despite those limits September Says is an oddly arresting debut for Labed, which promises an even stranger outing should she choose to direct a more adult story. Her acting career is filled with bold choices, and one can only hope her directorial career will be the same.