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DIRECTED BY: Karen Cinorre
FEATURING: Grace Van Patten, Mia Goth, Soko, Havana Rose Liu, Juliette Lewis
PLOT: Escaping a horrible day of work at a restaurant, Ana finds herself amongst girl guerrilla fighters in the midst of war.
COMMENTS: Though others may have said it better, few have said it with as much swagger and clarity as Queen: don’t try suicide. This is among the handful of messages littered around the intriguing mess that is Karen Cinorre’s feature debut, Mayday. In fact, every other line of dialogue seems to be some kind of advisement:
- Getting dizzy? Of course you are: you’ve never seen that far before.
- You’ve been in a war your whole life, you just didn’t know it.
- Girls are better off dead, ’cause now we’re free.
- A lot of girls just slip away. They deserve better.
- He needs to learn what fear feels like.
- Wars always get out of hand. Soon everyone will be in on it.
This last line bears dissection, as the gist of it perhaps makes some sense (the spiraling nature of violence), but the execution of the aphorism collapses under scrutiny. This is a difficulty that Mayday battles throughout. But despite nearly buckling under the weight of its own heavy-handedness, Mayday pulls off the sermonizing while remaining generally entertaining.
The film begins with an airman parachuting from a plane’s open hatch. The story begins with Ana (Grace Van Patten) waking up abruptly in her car. She is awoken by her friend and coworker Dmitri: they are grunts-in-arms at a fairly hellish venue, catering a wedding beset with freakish electrical episodes. Inside, the maitre d’ brushes past Ana, chiding her, “Clean yourself up! I have to look at that face.” The bride-to-be abruptly grabs her, and the two crash into the ladies’ room for a bridal meltdown. When Ana is then tasked with a trip to the basement to futz with the fuse box, things become increasingly jumpy. Flipping the main switch, she ascends the stairs to an empty kitchen and climbs into an oven only to emerge on some seaside rocks.
What follows is a girl-vs-boy fantasy adventure whose tone speedily careens toward a clunky patrio-normative finale. Marsha leads a partisan trio that somehow knew when and where to collect Ana upon her arrival. “Gert” is weapons-obsessed, “Bea” is the playful adventurer, and the now-complete gang of four hide out in a beached submarine. They spend their days frolicking and sending out distress signals, siren-style, to lure would-be rescuers (all men) into deadly storms.
Cinorre has chosen a compelling and (unfortunately still) topical premise to explore, but the experience is undercut with every Marsha-n diatribe. I am fully on board with criticizing male chauvinism, but have qualms about getting into bed with misandry. Mayday‘s ultimate acknowledgement of all genders’ capacity for ill-behavior, though welcome, isn’t enough when the plot clings to the “but you have a man who wants you” motivation for Ana to decide to carry on. Like Queen, Cinorre can swagger; unlike Queen, her message drowns in ambiguity.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: