#nocturne
Sinister linings playbook
In the brilliant Whiplash, a young drumming prodigy works so hard to perfect his craft that he ends up bleeding onto his drum set. Yet, that pales in comparison to the sacrifices made by a budding pianist in Nocturne, who literally makes a deal with the devil in return for fame and adoration. There’s no prizes for guessing how that goes, but this brisk and entertaining thriller will keep you grimly fascinated till the end.
The latest offering from Amazon Studios and Blumhouse, this follows Juliet (Euphoria’s Sydney Sweeney), a withdrawn high-schooler who aspires to be a successful pianist, but seems destined to live in the shadow (resentfully turning the piano sheets) of her more gifted twin sister Vivian (Madison Iseman). When the top-rated pianist at her school mysteriously commits suicide, Juliet is presented with a chance at the spotlight when she stumbles upon the former student’s notebook. One ill-advised incantation later, and things creepily start turning in her favour…
From first-time writer-director Zu Quirke, this is not a film aiming to reinvent the genre wheel as such. As is slightly common in movies about demonic bargains, it’s initially difficult to believe that Juliet can ignore so many warning signs – when has reading from a book covered in demonic symbols ever ended well? From here, as Juliet’s fortune improves – but at what cost? – it follows a fairly predictable course, with a demonic prophesy that feels slightly spoon-fed to the audience.
There may not be much new here, but Quirke makes the most of the tools at his disposal, with a level of restraint and control that feels uncommon in the genre. Displaying a clear conviction in his subject matter, Quirke makes clever use of lighting and an off-kilter score to place you in the deteriorating mind space of Juliet, helping you understand her dark decisions. It’s also sold by a driven performance from Sweeney, who shows enough desperation and overlooked fury (at times reminiscent of that scene in Carrie) to convince you that selling her soul might have been an attractive option. Spoiler – it isn’t.
With assured work from Quirke and Sweeney, this is a lean and effective thriller with a hell of a curtain call.
★★★
Nocturne
Tenuous tendrils stretch across the sky
like telephone lines, electric blue
and bold enough to stand against a usual dark.
Too high in the sky to be seen by daylight eyes,
their light comes from the bottom up,
like a mirage on a hot day, the heat
rises and turns the air into shimmer,
and they do. Almost auroral but not quite:
sibling, or cousin maybe - bland in its single
hue, that electric blue, those fingers
reaching only to clutch either each other
or the void they float in: an island of light
among the darkness.
Somewhere, there is a star with my name on it.
The telephone wires chart me a path to it.
But every time I pick up the phone,
it just keeps ringing.
And then the clouds dissipate.
And the line goes dead.
And I am left alone again
as if I wasn’t alone to begin with.