London Film Festival Review: You Were Never Really Here

(Dir: Lynne Ramsey, 2017)

On paper You Were Never Really Here has a hell of a lot of potential. Director Lynne Ramsey did fine work on revered previous film We Need to Talk About Kevin. The always intriguing Joaquin Phoenix plays lead character Joe. The story proffers an arthouse take on the kidnapped girl thriller, with plenty of brutal violence promised. Thus it's a shame that the reality is so unsatisfactory. This is a brutal film, but not from the violence which is mostly fleeting and shot in a suggestive manner (we see more of the after effects), rather it's a mixture of the overall tone and story. Any film about girls being kidnapped and the despicable reasons why is setting itself up to be a depressing and horrible story. So thankfully You Were Never Really Here's focus is actually Joe, but that turns out to be as much the problem.

The overall tone is a reflection of Joe's extremely damaged psyche. He's tortured by his past to the point where you wonder why he hasn't killed himself already. The film is at pains to show how fucked up he is, seemingly feeling that all he can do with his life is look after his mother and save those being made to suffer, destroying the perpetrators in the process. Even five minutes in his presence sucks all the joy of life from you, which might be testament to Phoenix's portrayal of a character seemingly so far beyond repair. A large portion of his dialogue is nearly indecipherable thanks to the way he mumbles – and since he's in almost every scene that adds to the frustration.

At this screening Ramsey briefly appeared to shyly "introduce" the film, and it was suggested there would be a Q&A afterwards. Unfortunately that didn't happen, which is a shame as it might've shed some light on why she bothered to make this film (it is an adaptation of a Jonathan Ames novel). If there is supposed to be a meaningful message it gets utterly lost in the exceptionally thick layers of darkness, depression and unclear dialogue. As a character study (which is what it essentially is) it fails by making the character so unlikable that you just wish he'd just get it over with and end it all for his own sake. The brief moments that are good are few and far between, whilst Johnny Greenwood's excellent score doesn't help lift the mood (but is objectively a great score). As everything about You Were Never Really Here is just so damn bleak and unenjoyable the point of it never emerges, making it hard to understand why it was made and why someone should put themselves through the soul-sucking journey of watching it.