“Bliuvaitė proves incredibly astute at portraying the casual cruelty of adolescents and the effects that this has on their target’s self-esteem.”

Premiering in Competition at Locarno, Toxic (Akiplėša) announces Lithuanian filmmaker Saulė Bliuvaitė as a very promising new talent with this melancholy – but never overly dour – tale of two adolescent girls in a dying industrial town who find themselves swept up in the predatory world of modelling ‘schools’ aimed at desperate and naïve young girls from lower-class backgrounds. Thirteen-year-old Marija (Vesta Matulytė) has recently moved in with her grandmother after an unspecified separation from her mother, and the film immediately establishes her trouble fitting in with the other girls her age in town, primarily due to her shy and awkward nature along with her noticeable limp. From the opening scene, where a group of girls don’t even bother hiding their disdain for Marija, Bliuvaitė proves incredibly astute at portraying the casual cruelty of adolescents and the effects that this has on their target’s self-esteem. Marija clearly isn’t at ease in her new surroundings, but after an initial encounter that begins as a physical fight over a pair of jeans, she quickly forms a bond with Kristina (Ieva Rupeikaitė), a local girl around her age. Kristina is everything that Marija isn’t – blonde, extroverted, and mischievous. Drawn to this girl who represents everything that Marija wishes she could be, she joins Kristina at a modelling school that promises fame and fortune. While Marija doesn’t become aware of the true extent of the school’s corrupt nature until the end of the film, Bliuvaitė immediately demonstrates how such places warp the ways in which adolescent girls view their bodies and themselves – after the first auditions, Marija and Kristina hang out with a group of girls who eat cotton in order to suppress their appetites. Bliuvaitė goes on to explore the lengths to which the pair will go to attain the ‘perfect’ body that will launch them to model stardom, thankfully in a way that avoids cheap shock value and exploitive portrayals of eating disorders.

While this all sounds like a recipe for the clichéd austere miserabilism that has become commonplace on the film festival circuit over the past two decades, Bliuvaitė refreshingly takes an approach that instead imbues the film with a gentle sadness. It is immediately clear to the audience that Marija and Kristina’s attempt to escape their surroundings is doomed to fail, but in observing the girls’ everyday lives in a dying industrial town filled with people barely making enough money to survive, it’s understandable why they see the modelling school as their golden ticket to a bright future. The film is also a perceptive study of how these places play on the self-esteem of young girls: Marija is clearly self-conscious about her limp, which is mocked by everyone from classmates to her own mother, and being told that she has a ‘unique’ beauty and walk clearly boosts her confidence. And Kristina is a product of the Instagram generation, styling herself with bleach-blonde hair, revealing clothes, heavy makeup, and piercings in order to provide a better life for herself and her mechanic father. Neither girl could be considered unattractive, but the insidious ways in which their manager and fellow teen models convince them to go to extreme lengths to attain the ‘ideal’ skinny physique are a potent representation of how many young girls today struggle with body image issues thanks to unrealistic expectations pushed by print and social media. To the film’s credit, it does an effective job balancing its portrayal of how exploitive businesses prey on vulnerable teenage girls, and a portrait of teenage friendship that doesn’t rely on the usual clichés of fighting over boys. Marija and Kristina’s burgeoning friendship has an ambiguous edge to it; at times it’s uncertain whether they really do care for each other, or if it is just a perverse mutual fascination driven by their desire to escape their home lives. Even with this ambiguity, their dynamic is endlessly compelling to watch, and the film’s ending offers a glimmer of hope that their friendship can develop in a more “normal” environment.

The performances from Vesta Matulytė and Ieva Rupeikaitė are what really make the film special, and both actresses should have bright futures ahead of them based on their work here. Matulytė – who at times bears a striking resemblance to a young Sarah Polley – is the quieter presence of the two, but is compulsively watchable and wholly convincing as an adolescent awkward in her skin and her surroundings, and who just wants to be as confident and pretty as the girls who taunt her, even as she retains the self-preservation to not go to quite the extremes that her friends do. Matulytė also proves to be a striking example of a performer who can make the act of observation incredibly compelling – Marija is often Kristina’s accomplice, but through their misadventures she develops a better understanding of the world around her, and you can see that understanding deepen by the way Matulytė silently reacts to the events that unfold. Rupeikaitė is the more boisterous and outwardly charismatic screen presence, and almost immediately it’s understandable why Marija becomes attached to her and wants to follow in her footsteps. Rupeikaitė and Bliuvaitė  also succeed in bringing a necessary depth and complexity to a character that could have been a vapid wannabe influencer in the wrong hands. Kristina goes to potentially deadly lengths to achieve her modelling dreams, and Rupeikaitė skilfully navigates the mix of bravado and sadness that drives her desperation to escape her dead-end life in a town with few opportunities. A scene between Kristina and her father near the end of the film demonstrates that while their relationship may be filled with friction, it is her love for him and her wish to provide him a better life that is her main motivation to become a model, which makes a major sacrifice by him in order for her to fulfill her dream all the more heart-rending. Most importantly, Matulytė and Rupeikaitė have fantastic chemistry, and they succeed in making the unusual dynamic between Marija and Kristina incredibly realistic and compelling to watch unfold.

The film’s melancholy tone is enhanced by Vytautas Katkus’ cinematography, which employs graininess and soft colors to almost give the film the feeling of a fairytale gone bad, a sensation enhanced by brief moments peppered throughout the film – vast open spaces, Marija and Kristina sitting under the moonlight bathed by a pale blue sky, a young girl fleeing a party in the forest as wolf calls dominate the soundscape. Despite the film’s present-day setting, various elements – the visuals, the clothing, the techno-influenced score – create an atmosphere that is more attuned to the 1990s, giving the film a timeless quality even as it deals with a very contemporary phenomenon.