Toxic
In a dispiriting drama from Lithuania, two thirteen-year-old girls push their bodies to extremes in order to become models.
Image courtesy of Mubi.
Lithuania may make films but it is only very occasionally that they get taken up so as to reach an international audience. But now we have Toxic a debut feature from that country written and directed by Saulė Bliuvaitė, a work so downbeat that the Lithuanian travel office may well regret that it is this film that is being more widely shown. Its success in achieving that may well have been triggered by its striking triumph at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival where it won no less than four awards including the Golden Leopard. Elsewhere it picked up three awards for best photography and that is no surprise given the evident quality of the work of Vytautas Katkus. Another great asset lies in the performances of its two leading players who at the 2024 International Film Festival of India shared the prize for Best Female Actor. But, while these assets stand out and the good intentions behind this film are apparent, I can't see Toxic as a work that will be a rewarding experience for those who seek it out.
It could, of course, be said that the film's title is a warning of what to expect. This is a portrait of life in a run-down industrial town, a bleak setting overshadowed by a power station. The central characters here are two thirteen-year-old girls. Kristina (Ieva Rupeikaitė) is an inhabitant living there with her father, Ŝarūnas (Giedrius Savickas) whereas Marija (Vesta Matulytė) is an outsider whose mother has packed her off to this town to live with her grandmother. In effect we come to see the place through the eyes of Marija who at the outset is victimised by the local girls. Marija has been born with a limp which becomes a reason to mock her and her jeans are stolen. In time she and Kristina will become allies with both of them drawn to the idea of taking advantage of the local modelling academy which holds out the promise of some of their students being taken up as catwalk models abroad. In theory Marija's beauty ensures that she might achieve this despite her limp, but in reality the chances of escaping the town in this way are remote and there is a strong likelihood that the fate of any girls thus selected is sleazy in more ways than one.
Despite the presence of a few older characters – Kristina's dad, a single parent, is carrying on with a plump middle-aged neighbour (Jekaterina Makarova) – the chief focus is very much on the local teenagers. Marija and Kristina may be screen centre but we also see many more youngsters including other girls enrolled in the hope of becoming models and boys who are after them offering weed and hoping for sex. All of these young people are caught up in a banal existence and one can imagine a film in which their situation could be explored in depth by fleshing out the various characters and their situation in an individual way while a strong narrative unfolds. But that is not Bliuvaitė’s approach. Instead of doing that and elaborating such background characters as Marija's grandmother her film feels wilfully obtuse. It frequently incorporates short scenes which have no clear purpose within the tale and which seem to exist because for this filmmaker mood is more important than narrative.
What is made apparent is the extent to which the girls are exploited and go along with it because life seems to offer nothing else. In particular we find Marija and Kristina going to any lengths to make their bodies measure up to the image required for modelling. This goes far beyond direct dieting to be slim and we find Katrina swallowing tapeworm eggs acquired on the dark web in order to act as a parasite within. Pressure mounts in another way too with the academy requiring payment for a photo shoot claiming that professional photographs are essential for success. With no funds for this available, Marija is tempted to earn the money by attending on an older man who requires what is described as a massage.
The two contrasted leads, Vesta Matulytė and Ieva Rupeikaitė, certainly ensure that we can wholly believe in Marija and Kristina and their success in doing that is all the more remarkable in that I understand that neither of them is a professional actress. Nevertheless, their characters make for dispiriting company. It is certainly the case that they are not sentimentalised but in the absence of a more rounded-out narrative there is little to make us care deeply beyond a general sense of sadness on seeing such empty, fruitless lives. Certainly, Bliuvaitė faces up to the lack of any likelihood of a happy outcome and finds a potent final image to express that. But I am nevertheless left with the sense that Toxic in offering a convincing portrait of low life from which there is no apparent escape becomes a depressing experience itself.
Original title: Akiplėša.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Vesta Matulytė, Ieva Rupeikaitė, Giedrius Savickas, Jekaterina Makarova, Vilma Raubaitė, Eglė Gabrenaitė, Gabrielė Petrauskaitė, Aleksandra Krivulina, Sofija Gedgaudaitė, Jokūbas Paškevičius.
Dir Saulė Bliuvaitė, Pro Giedrė Burokaitė, Screenplay Saulė Bliuvaitė, Ph Vytautas Katkus, Ed Ignė Narbutaitė, Music Gediminas Jakubka, Costumes Aura Narmontaitė.
Akis Bado-Mubi.
99 mins. Lithuania. 2024. UK Rel: 30 July 2025. No Cert.
