Alex is a college freshman who joins her university's rowing team and undertakes an obsessive physical and psychological journey to make it to the top varsity boat, no matter the cost.
'The Novice' is an incredibly engrossing film, I would compare it to stories set on obsession, search for perfection, and competition, like Black Swan or Wihiplash.
Lauren Hadaway did a great job with this directorial debut creating a very tense and engrossing environment for the story to develop. Alex clearly shows signs of OCD, with actions that depict her intrusive thoughts, her obsessions which drive her to compulsion in her sport, and Hadaway captures it in a hectic and intense ways, you really feel like you are in her brain. The cinemanography is fantastic, the landscapes and the close-ups are some of my favourite elements of it capturing both the isolation and the overwhelming nature of Alex's compulsion.
Isabelle Fuhrman is great as the lead, she an actress I haven't follow as much since her debut in Orphan, but I will definitely check out what she has been up to in the last few years. Her characters is complex, you feel sorry for her, you cheer for her as you meet other characters because you empathize with the story she is telling you, even understanding the destructive nature of her behaviour... but there is a lot more to more to it than you expect from the start.
Maybe I expected a more tragic or explosive ending for the type of story, but I am glad the writer took a more realistic approach to the story.
Highly recommend this film.
