Review of Bridgend (2015) by Mikael K — 17 Feb 2016

Ever since 2007, the small Welsh town of Bridgend has been plagued by an unexplained epidemic of suicides committed by teenagers and young adults. The peak was in 2007 and 2008, when 25 teenagers committed suicide, all but one by hanging. The trend continues still. The police have never been able to properly connect the cases, nor find any root cause.

In "Bridgend" Danish director Jeppe Rønde has created a completely fictional vision of what could have been going on in the town. A documentary director, he spent six years following the teenagers of Bridgent without finding an epiphany. So he imagined it. Kind of.

The film follows Sara (Hannah Murray) who moves into a small village in Bridgend County with her police officer father Dave (Steven Weddington). Sara soon befriends a posse of local teenagers who gather to loiter together during evenings. She gradually falls in love with Jamie (Josh O'Connor), a grim, distant but intense figure.

Soon, there is a suicide among them, with no warning signs Sara could have detected. But her new friends don't exactly mourn the sudden death, but greet it with seemingly ambivalent near-religious admiration of the most somber kind. Dave begins to investigate the incident, and soon Sara finds herself between two sides in a mysterious conflict.

The first act of the film is completely and utterly ingenious. Rønde's directing is top-notch and the cinematography is like nothing I've ever seen before. The deep, deadly yellows and oranges of the idyllic countryside bathing in halogen lights during the night still haunt me. Rønde's own, eerie electronic score intensifies the feel of a hypnagogic nightmare. Even Murray's shaky acting can't break the cinematic spell.

The second act drags just a bit, deepening some disturbing, psychologically complicated themes. It becomes apparent that the script- especially the dialogue- is not anything exceptional, it's the execution that makes it all so intense.

By the third act the spell is broken. The script loses its cohesion, the dialogue gets really bad, and the still marvelous cinematography can't carry the story on its own. "Bridgent" begins as a perfect masterpiece and slides through excellence into complete mediocrity. Rønde intentionally employs an admittedly clever gradient of detachment with Sara. The film is entirely from her point of view and we instinctively and easily relate to her in the beginning, but we lose our emotional connection to her as the night steals her. This makes the end of the film even more underwhelming.

It's very difficult to review a film like this. It is in many ways the very definition of an anticlimax, and a disappointment for sure. But what it gives in the beginning is something so unique and special that after a while you find yourself thinking about the movie a lot. Its abyss beckons. It might suffer from a less-than perfect script, some weak acting and a structure that doesn't carry you through, but the atmosphere, visual mastery and endless sadness make "Bridgend" unforgettable. I hope to see more from Rønde. With a better script, he could make a smashing film instead of this disappointing work of genius.