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The Wonder Movie Review

The Wonder is a 2022 psychological period drama film directed by Sebastian Lelio and starring Florence Pugh. It is a solid, but rather disappointing movie.

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“That’s a story, Kitty.

I’m looking for facts“

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Set in The Irish Midlands in 1862, the story follows a young girl who stops eating but remains miraculously alive and well. English nurse Lib Wright is brought to a tiny village to observe eleven-year old Anna O’Donnell. Tourists and pilgrims mass to witness the girl who is said to have survived without food for months. This movie has shades of ‘The Song of Bernadette’ in it, but it’s a much weaker version of a spirituality tale at the end of the day.

My main issue with the movie is that it never quite explores its thematic complexities in a deeper way. Yes, religion plays a big role in this story and the overall approach is admirably feminist, giving a modern spin to its period piece trappings. The dialogue is also quite strong and grounded in reality.

But the problem is that more often than not the movie strayed away from interesting conversations and moved toward the more familiar sequences with typical plot points and that frustrating emphasis on slow and silent sequences that never add much to the table.

The performances are uniformly strong. The supporting actresses all did a stellar job portraying their characters and they should also be given credit for their work here. But of course Florence Pugh is the main star here and the main draw for most people and she delivered another superb performance in a career that is already a terrific one.

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The Wonder was directed by Sebastian Lelio, a director whom I really admire. But this is not among his finest works unfortunately. The cinematography is strong and the movie looks great throughout, but the opening narration and the overall structure were odd and the film was too languidly paced to make a bigger impact. It’s solid, but for this type of fascinating material, it needed a more energetic and forceful execution.