Lavender

Oh. My. God. If I have ever seen a slow-paced movie, they seem like roller-coasters now. This title is only rivaled by that French joke of a horror movie called They Came Back (100 minutes of my life; gone).

Nothing happened for the first half hour besides the introduction of the characters and the main character living her life in between zoning out to annoying violin (or cello?) tunes for looong seconds. Literally two seconds of Dermot Mulroney and no Justin Long. Just as I was about to turn it off, though, my food arrived so I kept watching. Nothing kept happening for another 15 minutes, but right when I was closing the window for sure this time, a single interesting thing happened that involved Justin Long's character (and I love Justin Long) so I gave it yet another chance.

When there was more empty scenery and zoning out, I just skipped ahead to the revelation part, which wasn't too bad, and then it was finally over. I thanked God and ran here to try and stop others from wasting precious time.

Those who don't understand this genre have no business writing reviews for it. The story is beautifully crafted as a psychological revelation that presents itself to a young woman who has a traumatized childhood but does not remember it. Her mind helps heal itself by gifting her little pieces of repressed memories, one at a time. These pieces appear to us, and to her, in the form of tiny gift packages tied with a red ribbon. The people she lost, the same ones from her repressed memory present themselves to her as strangers and apparitions she chases to get to a complete recovery of her mind and memory. A literal translation of those memories would be ghosts but that depends on how you choose to see it. Right until the end it could very well just be a drama unfolding itself in her mind, right until her daughter seems to know things she has no business knowing about. That's when the ghosts become real. This movie has the perfect amount of spookiness and everything makes sense. By the end of the movie every bit falls together like a sweetly solved puzzle.

What a strange little movie we have in the under-the-radar Canadian supernatural drama "Lavender". It may be a low budget indy, but the story, acting and cinematography are all of high caliber.

Australian beauty Abbie Cornish is Jane, a woman with a horrific past that she can not remember. Cornish resonates as a wife and mother struggling to recall unthinkable events from a tragic childhood. Although she plays a gal from the American Midwest, her indigenous Aussie accent does seep through on occasion. But that doesn't detract from a solid performance as the anchor of a uniformly fine cast which includes veteran pros Dermot Mulroney and Justin Long.

And one other thing. Watching "Lavender" may well result in you never again looking at unexpected presents wrapped in pretty red ribbon as a welcome surprise.

Trauma certainly has its moments, a bold beginning, a rather dramatic ending, and a solid story development. At times in the middle I did find myself losing a little bit of interest, as it did delve into the realms of boring at times.

I'm surprised that this film has awful and amazing reviews, to me it's very middle of the road, there's nothing particularly shambolic here, it's nicely edited, well acted, but the main flaw it has, is it's overwhelming obviousness, you just know exactly how it's going to pan out, why, and who is at fault, there was no other possible outcome offered up.

It's watchable. 5/10

I'm honestly surprised this movie has such a low rating. It's not the best I have ever seen, but it's pretty good. There is a plot twist that I didn't see coming and the main actress played her character really well.

I would recommend this if you like psychological movies that has the climax towards the end.