Serena is, in a
word, baffling. It’s one of those
strange films where all the ingredients seem to come together to make something
that should be great. Talented actors
Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence star in a film by acclaimed Danish
director Susanne Bier. What could go
wrong? Apparently a whole hell of a lot,
as I’m struggling to even comprehend what I just saw.
Set in the Depression era South, Pemberton (Cooper) meets a
lovely woman named Serena (Lawrence), whom he immediately weds and brings in to
assist him in his logging business. At
first, it would seem that film is intent on have two storylines bent on
converging: one in which Pemberton is fighting off government attempts to
convert his logging land into a national park; the other being Serena’s fight
to be taken seriously as a savvy businesswoman in what is ostensibly a man’s
world. And yet, by the end of the film’s
first act, most of that pretense is dropped, leaving me to wonder why exactly
Pemberton’s business and Serena’s intelligence were so excessively established.
Rather, the film takes a hard left into making Serena baby
crazy. First she’s desperate to bear
Pemberton’s child. Then she is
devastated upon losing her pregnancy in a manner that precludes her from ever
being pregnant again. And then she goes
off the deep end by attempting to kill Pemberton’s former lover and
out-of-wedlock infant son, through a convenient enough henchman who believes
she saved his life in accordance with some prophecy. So it’s up to Pemberton to save the day, I
guess, fighting off the henchman in a climax to a conflict that is only
established very late in the film.
Yeah. This is some
weird shit.
If there is one thing to point to in how this film goes so
awry, it has to be the screenplay. All
the dialogue is stilted, melodramatic, riddled with clichés, and just downright
awkward. Cooper and Lawrence do their
absolute best to make their dialogue sound natural, often resorting to scenery
chewing eccentricities to distract from conversations that no two rational
people would have. Furthermore, as my
garbled synopsis demonstrates, the plotting makes next to no sense, emphasizing
scenes of lumbering, high life socializing, sexual encounters, and extraneous
subplots that ultimately distract from what (I think) was the film’s intended
purpose.
Given the title of the film, I’m assuming that the focus was
meant to be on Serena’s tragic downfall from a strong independent woman to
being an emotional wreck due to her sterility.
Though Lawrence manages to at least sell that as Serena’s arc through
sheer willpower (more so than the film’s bizarre script at any rate), this is a
painfully one-dimensional representation of a woman lead, reducing her
self-worth to her ability to bear children, even though her character is clearly
established to have other aspirations.
Yes, it is sad when a woman who wishes to have children loses the
ability to do so. But that doesn’t mean
she will immediately break under the strain of losing her procreative
abilities. Give her a bit more credit
than that.
Ultimately, Serena
is a fascinating film in just how bad it turned out to be. It isn’t even entertainingly bad; I actually
found the film rather boring when I wasn’t gawking at its blatant sexism. But the fact that such talented individuals
were involved in producing such an obvious flop of a film is simply
baffling. Just… baffling.
What films have baffled you with their sheer
horribleness? Leave your thoughts in the
comments below.
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