Willow Song: Disenfranchised however removed from powerless

By Jana Rankov

In Karen Lam’s The Curse of Willow Song, Vancouver is stripped of the excessive manufacturing values that normally disguises it within the newest Netflix or CW speculative drama. The nondescript gloss, which most productions liberally apply to cut back town to however a backdrop for worldwide audiences (consider Riverdale’s use of well-liked pink and blue neon lighting schemes), is changed by purposefully employed black and white. Cinematographer Thomas Billingsley casts ubiquitous alleyways and Vancouver landmarks in a well-known gray, instantly establishing that this can be a movie formed by town through which it was made. Through this native lens, the movie reveals the horrors of our metropolis; its housing disaster, the inequality in wealth and who has entry to it, and the racism that shuts individuals out. Willow Song’s Vancouver is located firmly within the Downtown Eastside and based in deep inequality that’s robust sufficient to change into a catalyst for supernatural metamorphosis.

We meet Willow (performed by Valerie Tian) after she’s taken the autumn for her brother’s crimes, battled by means of dependancy, and commenced a precarious new life in ‘the system’. Willow’s bodily unease is accentuated by her outsized hoodie and the dingy shelter the place she lives amidst mildew and low ceilings. She is incessantly framed off-centre and filmed with a handheld digicam, establishing her because the embodiment of the discomfort that permeates the movie. In flip, the constructions, establishments and programs that she bristles at appear equally uncomfortable together with her presence.

This mutually antagonistic dynamic is exemplified in a scene that finds Willow’s probation officer (Amanda Burke) answering expenses of ignorance with offhandedly racist remarks. Like a lot of the racism woven into the movie’s exploration of disenfranchisement throughout the metropolis, this interplay is taken immediately from writer-director Karen Lam’s life. (Albeit in Lam’s case, the alternate occurred throughout a NEXUS interview.) Willow’s solely pal Flea (Ingrid Nilson) isn’t a supply of consolation both, always insisting that their world is one among exploitation. When Willow’s boss all of a sudden leaves her with out work, Flea is confirmed proper. ‘The system’ cracks open and he or she tumbles again onto the road the place her perilous outdated life awaits. When Wolf (Adam Lolacher) comes in search of cash he thinks he’s owed, Willow narrowly escapes with the assistance of Dani (Elfina Luk), her brother’s girlfriend. When Dani arranges for her to stay in a big, deserted warehouse in Surrey, her previous takes a good tighter grip on her.

Though the realities of Willow’s life are past her management, it quickly turns into obvious that she is much from powerless. Inspired by visible compositions of manga, Lam paints the empty house round Willow in darkness – she is once more framed off-centre, underscoring her persevering with unease. Left alone within the huge recesses of the warehouse, one thing begins to fester. In a state suspended between dream and actuality, she glides throughout the halls of the warehouse on her first night time. After one other day of fruitlessly in search of work whereas dealing with racism and mistrust, her nightly wanderings repeat themselves, with the addition of a black substance that oozes out of the pores of the wall behind her. From right here, the movie eases its viewers into an ambiguous realm steeped in supernatural suspense. A sample emerges through which her daytime vulnerability is sharply contrasted together with her darkish transformation at night time. As the nighttime sequences improve in length, an untethered digicam floats round Willow ethereally and an ominous black form grows like a storm cloud, leading to a fancy visible metaphor for the disenfranchised of Vancouver.

The warehouse is one among many empty areas that hang-out town. The vacant homes, flats, and storefronts are a relentless reminder of the inequality and greed that has left many residents dealing with housing insecurity. This absurdity doesn’t go with out remark within the movie. When introducing the warehouse, Dani surmises, “The thing about this city? You leave an empty space and next thing you know, you got squatters”. Having been repeatedly refused typical technique of sustaining herself, Willow has no selection however to yield to a special energy by means of her symbiosis with the warehouse. Her anxiousness and alienation are amplified within the house that represents them, manifesting as psychokinetic skills. The black and white cinematography additional enhances this connection: simply because it’s uniquely suited to depicting Vancouver’s gray palette, it creates an unsettling tone for Willow’s transformation, suggesting that her psychokinetic powers are an extension of town.

Whether Willow has any management over her metamorphosis is unclear, leaving the viewer to interpret the true nature of her powers. Could these skills have been harnessed or channelled constructively had Willow not been so mistreated? Was she all the time doomed to be monstrous? Slowly, the warehouse itself turns into a personality, providing Willow a way of help she’s in any other case missing and assets and distractions – chairs in want of restoring – that present uncommon moments of peace. However, this second of solace isn’t a harbinger of the long run that awaits. Rather, it serves to taunt each Willow and the viewers with a actuality that the system has made unattainable.

By the climax, Willow has been betrayed and extorted, however is much from helpless. Willow and the warehouse have change into one, together with her psychokinetic skills a very depraved manifestation of her newfound capacity to guard herself. Having assumed the type of a whirling, menacing black expanse, she dispatches those that would trigger her hurt or threaten her peace. The movie’s final body, Willow’s reworked face additional distorted by a horrifying and horrified scream, is each a testomony to her newfound powers and the entrenched circumstances that spawned them.

The Curse of Willow Song is at the moment out there on the VIFF Connect streaming platform.