Toxic

Original title: Akiplėša

Directed by: Saulė Bliuvaitė

Country: Lithuania

Length: 99 min.

Year: 2024

Premiere: Locarno Film Festival 2024

GOLDEN LEOPARD FOR BEST FILM

Synopsis: Marija is introduced by Kristina in a very problematic - in fact, toxic -  environment.

RATING: 5/5

REVIEW

One throuser is not enough for two, in the incipit of Saulė Bliuvaitė's debut feature film. Yet, instead of bearing conflict, this is how Marija and Kristina meet up, two teeenagers, one of which seemingly foreigner (even though this aspect never gets expanded), living in the degraded outskirts, longing for a better life, which especially Kristina hopes to achieve through a modeling agency for underage kids.

The relationship between the two characters is perhaps one of the most engaging aspect of the film: soon Kristina proves to be entirely participant in the toxicity of the environment she is, and slowly influences Marija into parttake it aswell. Marija's commitment is however partial, be it her physical issue related to a lame footing, her grandmother's upbringing, or her seemingly more educated background. This discrepancy does not have the expected effect on their relationship, nor brings the film to an expected conclusion - another strength of the film, that does not fall into common tropes or plot elements in its retelling of a social context that has been touched frequently by cinema.

Toxic is a body horror without gore, but equally, if not more, unsettling. The exploitation of the juvenile figures of the protagonists, the pedophiliac beauty standards imposed by society are never rubbed under the nose in a distracting way, even if their centrality to the film is obvious, not only in the context of the modeling agency, but more universally, as the girls are seen dragged into dangerous situations with young adult men that act predatorily with them. It could seem a stretch, but Saulė Bliuvaitė achieves such a coherent study of the exploitation of the body of women and girls that it proves how Coraline Fargeat's  The Substance ended up missing its point in favour of overindulgent spectacle. 

That is not to say that Toxic is not spectacular, on the contrary. Bliuvaitė manages to slip in countless beautiful moments, when the toxicity of the world seems to fade away momentarily in favour of the beauty of the lithuanian landscape, even if littered by the junk of men, or the ramshackled buildings. It is almost an additional visual suggestion that emphasizes on what Toxic is about, the artificious imposings of a human society on something that should remain untouched, as the childhood of the protagonists. 

An entirely impressive debut, Saulė Bliuvaitė's Toxic is one of the most articulate films ever about the exploitation of the body of girls, with a balanced approach that never gets into excess, but is sufficient to be disturbing.