Violation: Canadian thriller replaces the tawdry in the rape-revenge genre with bleak, arty atmosphere

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B-plus

The rape-revenge movie has been with us effectively so long as there have been movies. This year, a genre often considered cheap and exploitative has been upgraded to art.

Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman leads the vengeful charge with five major Oscar nominations. But on this side of the border, Madeleine Sims-Fewer’s ultimately gruesome one-woman tour de force, Violation, turned heads too, recently being voted Best Canadian Feature by the Vancouver Film Critics Circle.

Co-producer/director/writer/star Madeleine Sims-Fewer has a dark agenda in Violation.

Violation, which is being released via the Digital TIFF Bell Lightbox Friday, comes by its art cred honestly. It’s set mainly in the woods, shot in natural light, during a weekend by the lake in a cabin more luxe than rustic. And, like Lars von Trier’s Antichrist it uses its natural surroundings and metaphor-laden microscopic close-ups of predator and prey to suggest humans set free from the constraints of civilization.

Sims-Fewer is the straw that stirs the drink in this subtext-laden narrative. She gives a haunting performance starring in a movie she co-directed, co-produced and co-wrote (with Dusty Mancinelli). And she changes up and muddies the typical revenge narrative (despicable person does despicable thing and we wait for their comeuppance with gleeful, and maybe shameful, anticipation). 

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

The sequence of events is the first hurdle, given the movie’s tendency to time-shift at the same location. We are introduced to Miriam (Sims-Fewer) and her partner Caleb (Obi Abili), bickering in a car on route to the cottage belonging to Miriam’s sister Greta (Anna Maguire) and her aggressively friendly husband Dylan (Jesse LaVercombe). Though the siblings clearly display a bond as they splash about affectionately in the lake, there’s also something unspoken, with brittle exchanges that suggest that bond is now strained by recent happenings.

Feeding us flashback hints like breadcrumbs, we finally arrive at the alcohol-fueled moment by a fireside that ignites events.

Violation’s clearest departure from convention is to remove all satisfaction from the act of revenge. A movie that simmered for its first two acts suddenly turns brutal. Literal overkill overwhelms the film, and presumably most viewers, becoming almost a tedious ordeal. 

That, indeed, may be the point. There are no winners in Violation, no one to like, and a bleak draining of the protagonist’s humanity in place of what is usually painted as “empowerment.” 

This is, in short, not a good-time film. It’s no surprise that, when Violation played as part of the Midnight Madness series at the Toronto International Film Festival, it was a runner up to Roseanne Liang’s Shadow in the Cloud the kind of monster movie that leaves people cheering.

But it is a genre movie whose intelligence and artistry is worth admiring. Sims-Fewer clearly follows her vision, and paints an unsettling picture with sure strokes. I look forward to more.

Violation. Co-produced, written and directed by Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli. Starring Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Anna Maguire and Jesse LaVercombe. Opens Friday, March 19 at the Digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.