The Liberation has the bones of every cult movie I have ever seen, yet somehow it feels apart, a completely different and, for this genre, surprisingly female-driven narrative that is at once edge-of-your-seat suspense thriller and achingly personal. That behind the scenes a man is at the heart of all of this, his own deeply personal story finally being told through the female gaze, as it were, makes The Liberation not just a riveting entertainment, but an important work that easily explains its presence as a standout at the Telluride Film Festival where it had its World Premiere Friday night in front of a rapt packed audience.
Inspired by the strange journey of director Guy Nattiv‘s grandmother, a Holocaust survivor who later in life drifted slowly away from her husband and children when she fell under the spell of a woman 10 years younger in what the family only years after her passing realized was what we now know as a cult. Nattiv was only a child trying to process all this at the time, but decades later took his own journey to finally put the pieces together to make his film, a work of fiction inspired by real life and dedicated to survivors of cults everywhere, and the families who are left behind.
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Centering the story here, set in the early ’80s, is a stunning performance by Carrie Coon who plays a seemingly ordinary suburban woman, Rita Cooper (the actual name of Nattiv’s grandmother) who works by day as an assistant New Jersey bank manager, has two loving teenage daughters and a seemingly content, if unexciting, marriage to husband Reuben (Tracy Letts).
We learn soon she is the sole survivor of her Polish family, interned as a child in a Nazi concentration camp. Her youth was stolen and like so many others the horror of it has never left. Her daily life is kept together as a mother, wife, worker who pops pills to keep going, tries self-help, but deep down, maybe not even that deep, is in denial about the gaping hole in her life. When an attractive younger woman, Ricki (Lily James), arrives to deposit a large amount of cash, it is the beginning of a life-changing experience. Very slowly this becomes more than just a transaction with a customer but the key to happiness Rita finds she must have at this unexpected turning point.
Ricki, enormously captivating and seductive in her own ways, runs an all female commune located behind the locked gates of a rural farm. It is clear she sees the vulernability of Rita immediately and invites her to come visit. It opens a world foreign to the pent-up Rita, but eventually urged to join in the freeing dance exercises with the other residents she loosens up and eventually gets sucked into this cult, at one point trying to resist and return to her family, but ultimately succumbing.
Nattiv tells the story in non-linear fashion, mixing flashbacks and current day to explain the pattern that leads Rita to abandon her family in favor of this new existence. Reuben at first is puzzled but willing to let Rita have her space with her little adventure, but when Ricki gets too close for comfort, even accompanying the family on a fun night out at a roller skating arena and later even suggesting a separation might be in order, he blows up and orders her to stay away. Rita takes Ricki’s side and her immersion continues, her hair cut off, the mission accomplished. Or is it?
The other concurrent side of the story is driven by Rita’s daughters, Jo (Odessa Young) and younger sibling Ella (Bella Ramsey) who, without their father’s knowledge steal away to lure their mother out of this cult by showing up and convincing Ricki they have only the best intentions and just want to spend time with their mom. Ricki buys it, and they are now staying at the facility with an ulterior motive that will eventually drive the film’s riveting second half. Nattiv steers it like a pulse pounding thriller when Jo’s dire health emergency sends Ella in an unhinged tailspin and a race to get her out and to a hospital, even as her own mother remains firmly on board with Ricki who, among other things, convinces her she is a healer with no need of conventional medicine and methods.
The title of the film works on several levels here, the word “liberation” could refer to Rita’s tortured past as a child never leaving her, the commune and female camraderie she finds with Ricki a ticket to a life she never imagined, and the pain she masked finally eased but at what price? Employing a visual look of some films of its period and a pace that never lets us come up for air, Nattiv and his co-screenwriter have taken what is often in films a more exploitative premise and given it depth and heart-wrenching purpose to understand, or at least try, why someone like a Rita Cooper could get so sucked up into a world like this, turning her back on everything her life had been until, well, a liberation that may be more complicated than what it seems.
What really drives this narrative beyond Nattiv’s skillfull filmmaking is a dynamite cast and roles for some extremely talented performers who burn up the screen like never before. Coon, so good in just about everything she chooses to do, gets a tricky role to dissect, the woman leading a life we recognize and can accept, and the person she is seduced into becoming that we simply don’t understand. That she makes the evolving person she morphs into not only believable, but one we have empathy towards, is a tribute to an actor who goes way beneath the surface to find the sad truths of a woman who has buried it all. Coon will break your heart.
James, never succumbing to the stereotypical tropes of cult leaders we have seen countless times (almost always men) here finds a path into this woman who offers a way out and a way in for those who are the most vulnerable. She does it with a bewitching manner that never feels overtly threatening, but oddly caring and understanding. It is a portrayal of cult madness that isn’t inherently evil, but strangely human and that is what makes Ricki’s powers truly frightening.
James has steadily been building a filmography, from Cinderella to Pam Anderson and beyond, that is impressive, but here she has a career high point creating a mysterious leader you just can’t take your eyes off. In a way she reminds me of the way Angelina Jolie, in a supporting role, just took over Girl Interrupted and never let go. James is next level here. Watch out.
Ramsey again shows why she is also one of the best of her generation, playing Ella as a young girl who must rise to the occasion as she realizes a life or death moment and go for broke. Ramsey ignites the screen like nobody’s business. Young is also very fine, but her role asks her to spend a lot of time in various stages of distress.
Letts, as always, is all pro here playing a man who doesn’t know what is happening to the comfortable family life he thought he had. He is very good, and convinces us of Reuben’s now-conflicted marriage to Rita, even as Letts is playing it against Coon, his real life wife. This film however belongs to the ladies, and you won’t forget them anytime soon. It also belongs to Nattiv who uses his cinematic powers to find some level of closure in his own life.
Producers are Julia Lebedev, Eddie Vaisman, Oren Moverman, Nattiv, Jaime Ray Newman, Steven Schneider, Roy Lee. The film has been dedicated to Bleecker Street’s founder, the late Andrew Karpen, who was initially involved in developing the movie.
Title: The Liberation
Festival: Telluride
Distributor: Bleecker Street
Director: Guy Nattiv
Screenplay: Guy Nattiv and Noa Berman Herzberg
Cast: Carrie Coon, Lily James, Bella Ramsey, Tracy Letts, Odessa Young
Running Time: 2 Hours and 4 Minutes
