The Taste of a Poison Paradise: Bliuvaite Explores the Commodification of Women’s Bodies
Lithuanian filmmaker Saulė Bliuvaitė perhaps could not have contrived a more succinct title than Toxic (Akiplėša) for her debut feature, set in the bleak confines of an industrial town where dysfunction and desolation is the day-to-day norm. Not all is despairing, despite what it sounds like on paper, as two thirteen-year-old girls, each outcasts for their own unique reasons, forge a fast friendship, initially as a means for subconscious survival. While the template of the narrative is quite familiar, Bliuvaitė makes some distinctive choices elevating this beyond both miserabilism or sentimental absolution, meandering like its subjects toward some ill-formed ideas about how to escape an environment they did not choose and will certainly not uplift them.… Read the rest
