52 Films by Women Vol 8. 40. Broken Bird (Director: Joanne Mitchell)

 

Pictured: Troubled lady poet Sybil (Rebecca Calder) goes for a walk in the park in a scene from director Joanne Mitchell's horror film, 'Broken Bird', written by Dominic Brunt. Still: Catalyst Studios (UK)

Broken Bird is a modest budget British horror film shot in Serbia that relies less on jump scares and fetishized violence than on unsettling performances and fragmented narrative strands. Not to mention fantasy sequences, exposed intestines and stitched together body parts. Expanded from her short film, Sybil, by director Joanne Mitchell, working from a script by her husband Dominic Brunt, it tells the story of a troubled young woman who has an unfortunate habit of causing every funeral home she works at to close down.

Rebecca Calder excels as Sybil who we first meet at an evening of ‘pies, pints and poetry’ in an unspecified Northern town. She fits the stereotype of troubled lady poet, reciting verse slowly and deliberately, as if every word might be the last but never is. Sybil does not suffer other poets gladly. When she hears verse that is patently better than her own, she crunches potato chips loudly, then stands on a potato chip for effect. You wonder why she couldn’t use her mobile phone like everyone else.

Sybil is tall, neat and traumatised. As a child, her entire family was killed in a car crash that she miraculously survived. Going for a drive, she stops to pick up the damaged remains of a dead fox, tutting at the animal corpse. ‘You will make me late,’ she tells it, if somehow expecting an apology.

Sybil is not the film’s only troubled lonely young woman. Emma (Sacharissa Claxton) is a police officer unable to cope with the loss of her young son, who, whilst wearing a superhero outfit, knocked over a carton of juice. Angry, she sends him to his room, where he made use of the open window. Mitchell doesn’t immediately specify exactly what happened, but the body of her son has disappeared. Emma finds herself staring at a computer screen for longer than is healthy causing her boss to call her in for a word. As she is sent on (another) leave of absence, a colleague stops to tell her that she’s there if she needs her.

Pictured: 'When can you start?' Bereaved funeral director Mr Thomas (James Fleet) hires troubled Sybil (Rebecca Calder) on the spot in a scene from the British-Serbian horror film, 'Broken Bird', written by Dominic Brunt and directed by Joanne Mitchell. Still courtesy of Catalyst Studios (UK)

Mitchell drip feeds the audience details, but the film initially focuses on Sybil applying for and settling into a new job. An aged funeral director, Mr Thomas (James Fleet) has suffered a bereavement of his own – his wife has passed - and needs help to run his business. There is a room on the ground floor that is locked shut. The audience has seen enough horror films to know what’s inside. When we first meet Mr Thomas, he is lying on a preparation table as if a corpse himself. There are so few places at work to have a nap.

Mr Thomas accepts Sybil’s application without so much as a check of her references. Surely, with the closure of all those other funeral homes, there would be a plethora of candidates.  Still, he concludes the interview with the question, ‘when can you start?’ that illustrates his own desperation.

Sybil is a fantasist and goes to the park with an empty pram so that she can be amongst children playing. She has a temper, complaining about youths skateboarding in one scene. We expect them to follow her into a dark tunnel into which she walks, but they don’t. They are probably nice young people.

A visit to a local museum offers Sybil a chance to meet people who don’t write poetry. Mark (Jay Taylor) welcomes her when she arrives, Sybil inspecting the contents of glass cases with casual interest. Mark provides her with additional information, to elicit a question or two, but Sybil is wearing earbuds, listening to music. The two of them collide, scruffy bearded Mark, neatly attired Sybil, the latter dressed like a 19^th Century nanny, the hair above her forehead cut in a straight line; there’s nothing casual about her. Mark apologises and asks her if she likes the museum. ‘Yes,’ she replies. There is a fantasy sequence, but we’re not sure from whose point of view, of the two of them locked into each other’s gaze, etc, but Sybil decides to leave. Mark hands her a card asking her to submit a review. ‘Reviews are very important,’ he tells her.

The fantasy sequences increase in frequency as the film progresses, and it becomes clear that Sybil is the fantasist. An early one involves a woman inspecting the body of her husband, initially lamenting her own loneliness, then ranting about the times he spent away, his affairs. Sybil, with a narcissist’s logic, encourages her to hit him. You know, give the corpse’s head a slap. The widow does so. Sybil joins in to the extent that the widow’s husband’s head is transformed into concave mush. Cut to the two women standing in the room, the body untouched. Such sequences are a cliché, but we judge them on the level of invention, the surprising nature of behaviour shown. I score this fantasy sequence three out of five, others in which the screen is bathed in light somewhat lower.

As Mr Thomas creeps into the locked room with two glasses of milk (he must be thirsty) for a chat, we have no doubt who he is talking to. Fleet is extremely good at playing a man blinded by grief. Sybil’s two worlds collide after she meets Mark at one of the poetry readings, the organiser is a stout bearded man with a ratty jumper. The filmmakers can be assured that poetry is not the preserve of social misfits. There’s football. Mark initially offers to buy Sybil a drink and give her a private tour of the museum (another fantasy?) but then his girlfriend, Tina (Robyn McHarry) shows up. Sybil bursts in on their table. ‘Why don’t you buy me that drink?’ she asks. ‘Yes,’ says Tina, why doesn’t he? Of course, Sybil is not the wine and chit-chat sort.

There is a point at which Sybil returns to the museum only to see Mark and Tina together. The next time she sees Mark (not a spoiler, as it is featured in a still), he appears in her funeral home. Well, the others have closed down; where’s he going to go? Sybil is shocked but a quick montage of events shows us how he got there, though not how his intestines remained exposed.

Pictured: 'How do I love you? Let me count the stitches.' Sybil (Rebecca Calder) patches the object of her affection, Mark (Jay Taylor) back to presentability in a scene from the British horror film, 'Broken Bird', director Joanne Mitchell's expansion of her short film, 'Sybil'. Still courtesy of Catalyst Studios (UK)

Love means restoring the body of the man you love back to perfect shape, even if it involves taking someone else’s arm. It is fortunate that Mr Thomas decided to go away for a few days, leaving the funeral home in Sybil’s safe pair of hands. After all, she knows what tea he drinks. Yorkshire. Meanwhile, Emma continues to stew in her grief, calling her ex and imagining her son is still in the house. Cue a trip from the police; of course, they find nothing.

In the film’s final act, Emma and Sybil meet briefly while the former takes a trip away. Emma then makes her computer time count. We learn something about Sybil’s family and the finale features lavish costumes, dancing and broken glass. To up the ante on the suspense front, a baby is snatched. To misquote Henrik Ibsen, an empty pram in Act One is put to use in Act Five.

The scenes involving Emma drag the pace down, though she is the one character with a redemption arc. Mitchell makes comic horror use of Battenberg cake, demonstrating that if someone offers you refreshment in a funeral home when you are there to inspect your partner’s body, you don’t take it.

Mitchell doesn’t make entirely clear why this particular end of a funeral business should cause Sybil to spiral so far out of control. One interpretation is that this is the first time she has fallen in love. Her desire to create her own version of a family – ‘all I ever wanted’ – is somewhat at odds with her history. It’s abundantly clear that you don’t meet people at poetry readings. However, those scenes illustrate how Sybil steals other’s words and make them her own, behaving like a Magpie. All writers steal, it’s what you do with it that counts.

The finale put me in mind of The Amazing Mr Blunden. There’s something about a house on fire that brings me back to that film, rather than to Jane Eyre which is more obvious.

Pictured: 'All I ever wanted.' A fantasy sequence involving Mark (Jay Taylor), Sybil (Rebecca Calder) and child in a scene from the British-Serbian horror film, 'Broken Bird', written by Dominic Brunt and directed by Joanne Mitchell. Still courtesy of Catalyst Studios (UK)

Mitchell’s direction has some effective touches, notably introducing characters by filming them from behind; the trick of withholding a view of someone’s face to excite interest. As Sybil, Calder has to act without a foil, but she keeps our attention. The design of Emma’s son’s bedroom is notable. It includes a poster for Fox Man, the hero that the young boy would like to be. It also establishes a link between the missing boy and the dead fox that Sybil scoops up.

Having opened London’s 2024 Fright Fest, Broken Bird earned a week’s release in cinemas. Audience attendance in North London was spotty - groups of people, sitting right at the back of the cinema. However, it didn’t result in any walkouts. This is a testament to Mitchell and Brunt’s storytelling. Unfortunately, it didn’t elicit any gasps or commentary either, which is normally a sign that a horror film is a crowd pleaser.

 

Reviewed at Cineworld Enfield, North London, Screen 11, Wednesday 4 September 2024, 21:10 screening