Serena

Synopsis: It is Depression-era North Carolina and George Pemberton (Bradley Cooper) is a wealthy timber merchant whose business empire is in financial difficulty. When he meets and marries the beautiful and self-assured Serena (Jennifer Lawrence) he’s on top of the world. But not for long as piece by piece that world falls apart.

Unlike Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence’s previous pairing, the vastly over-rated Silver Linings Playbook for which Lawrence won a Best Actress Oscar, Serena has been coolly received Stateside.  Which is not to say that it’s a bad movie but rather that there is no hero triumphing over evil, no reassuring  redemption, no take-home feel-good ending.  To say that the film is light years away from mainstream American sensibilities is an understatement.  Rather, death permeates this film like a virulent rising damp.

The film opens conventionally enough, looking like a lush Gatsby-era costume drama with the manly Cooper and the elegant Lawrence meeting astride thoroughbred steeds, a surefire indicator of the libidinous delights which, giddy up, are a mere frame cut away.  

Danish director, Susanne Bier, who has a strong portfolio of emotionally intense films such as Brothers and After The Wedding and directed the Oscar-winning In A Better World (she also has made one film in America previously, the best-forgotten Things We Lost In The Fire) plants the seeds of apprehension in this early part of the film.  George is shown to be beholden to the alpha-male self-image. Sure, he has heroically saved the life of one of his workers but he is not only in the business of despoiling native forests for financial gain (and plans to do more of it in Brazil), he has an insatiable desire to find one of the last remaining panthers in the woods and kill it. His marriage to the desirable Serena very much fits with this world-bestriding machismo, particularly as she fully endorses him.

That something is going to go wrong is never in doubt but the terrible beauty of the film is not just the fatalistic inexorability with which they do go wrong but the completeness of the devastation wrought.  At heart, Serena is a story of divine retribution but one told with European composure (the only exception is the rather contrived climax but this passes soon enough) and unrelenting Nordic sternness.

Although Cooper is not inherently well-suited to the persona of a 1930s lumber king he acquits himself well  enough. Lawrence however is excellent.  Heck, if she’d won the Oscar for this I wouldn’t have complained.  As the title indicates, Serena is the film’s epicentre but appropriately enough Lawrence lets the storm build around her whilst keeping perfectly still. It is only in the latter part of the film that her true nature appears. The other performances of note come from Toby Jones as the local sheriff and "park agitator" whilst  Rhy Ifans gives a wonderful against-type performance as a cryptic backwoods fanatic.

Serena is not the sort of film to go to if you’re looking for a bit of light-hearted escapism but if you’re in the mood for some darkly tragic story-telling you’ll be well served.

FYI: The film was originally to be directed by Darren Aronofsky with Angelina Jolie in the lead but they fell out and the project was shelved. Cooper and Lawrence were signed before Silver Linings Playbook (and for Lawrence Hunger Games) but delays in financing and post-production held up the film's release.

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