The obsessive ambitions of a college rower are masterfully orchestrated in a debut feature by the writer-director Lauren Hadaway.
In “The Novice,” the impressive debut feature from the writer-director Lauren Hadaway, Alex (Isabelle Fuhrman) is a college freshman who finds purpose in the masochistic ecstasy of team rowing.
Alex isn’t suited to the demands of her sport. She’s not as strong as her crew mates, and she’s not as team-oriented as they are either. But she becomes obsessed with rowing, driven to achieve her goal of making the school’s varsity squad, even if her incessant efforts alienate her peers and coaches. Not even Alex’s first queer romance with Dani (Dilone), a confident teaching assistant, can draw Alex out of her fixation. She begins her season as a novice, and threatens to end it as a zealot.
Hadaway has crafted a film that thematically and visually resembles Damien Chazelle’s “Whiplash,” for which she served as a sound editor. But where Chazelle’s film followed a protagonist with world-class aspirations, the modest scale of Alex’s ambitions keeps “The Novice” more grounded as a character study, and helps the film steer clear of overblown statements about success. The protagonist merely wishes to be the worst rower on her team’s best boat.
Without the pressure of narrative grandeur, Hadaway is free to go big in her filmmaking style. She uses maximalist techniques like slow motion, rapid editing and deep space staging to create dreamlike sequences of Alex’s isolation. Fuhrman’s performance matches the filmmaking for its intensity. The movie achieves a surreal allure — at times, it’s hard to pay attention to the dialogue because the images and the sound design are already communicating so much. If the story’s hero can only aspire to the middle of the pack, the beginner behind the camera shows no such limitations.
The Novice
Rated R for intense sequences of distress, language, brief nudity, and some sexual content. Running time: 1 hours 34 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
