Mark Reviews Movies: THE LOST GIRLS

The Lost Girls, Vertical Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 16, 2022

The premise of The Lost Girls is that the Wendy from J.M. Barrie's stories about Peter Pan grew up, as in those original stories, and passed on the tale of her adventures to subsequent generations of girls in the family. Writer/director Livia De Paolis' movie sees this belief in or acknowledgement of fantasy as both a gift and a curse, but mostly, it sees the concept as a neat gimmick to support a story that is confused at best or incompetent at worst. It might be both, of course, but let's offer the potential for at least some benefit of the doubt.

Based on Laurie Fox's novel, the story revolves around the original Wendy's granddaughter, also named Wendy and played by De Paolis in a most unfortunate performance. There is also, unfortunately, no excuse for that performance here. In her roles as screenwriter and behind the camera, De Paolis is the central filmmaker in charge of both the vision and execution of this material (She also serves as a producer, just to add to those behind-the-scenes roles), so the decision to cast herself in such a vital role rests solely on her.

Wendy, the granddaughter, was born in London and moved to New York City as a child with her father Clayton (Julian Ovenden), following the apparent disappearance of the girl's mother (played by Joely Richardson). As a child (played by Amelia Minto) and teenager (played by Emily Carey), Wendy speaks with a geographically appropriate accent, but when De Paolis takes over the role for the majority of the movie, the character suddenly seem to come from London and New York by way of Central Italy.

It's a major distraction, to say the least, and it doesn't help matters that De Paolis seems to have little conception of her character, despite writing Wendy in the first place. The clunky dialogue is no help, either, but the other performances here at least try to sell it in some way. De Paolis just floats and coasts in her role, and the result is a major deficit in the movie.

The rest of it isn't much better, but De Paolis does present a couple of intriguing ideas within the setup. They aren't explored or examined in a considerable way, since the plot moves back and forth through time—sometimes within the same scene, only to repeat the flashback or flash-forward later—and between reality, fantasy, and/or some delusion. That it's never clear whether the world of Neverland really exists or it only exists as some shared, familial form of mental illness is another issue here, and as presented here, neither option is particularly satisfying.

Here, the elder Wendy (played by Vanessa Redgrave), who first went to Neverland and had those adventures from the original stories, has passed the tales to her own daughter and the younger Wendy. When Peter Pan (an appropriately puckish Louis Partridge, who has a fascinating hint of the sinister) does finally appear to a teenaged Wendy, she travels with him to the magical realm (The flying effects are accomplished by unconvincingly cheap green screen, but that's a minor quibble in the bigger picture).

The first concept of some note is how Peter expects the third-generation Wendy to cook, clean, and care for him and his Lost Boys, but this Wendy is a modern girl, who cares about her studies and her future career as a writer. The unchanging expectations of the boy-who-wouldn't-grow-up, as well as his villainous counterpart—and, in this version, sex pest—Captain Hook (a deviously charming Iain Glen), seem to be making some point about the nature of men—or, at least, their darker potential.

Instead, though, Wendy grows up and, despite her strength of self-worth as a child, is traumatized by Peter's failure to return for her. Save for those stories, she becomes absent in her own life with husband Adam (Parker Sawyers) and daughter Berry (Ella-Rae Smith), who rebels against her mother's devotion to magic and make-believe—before also falling under whatever spell the un-aging boy has on these girls and women.

The movie is a narrative and thematic mess that doesn't seem to care—or, perhaps, even know—what the make-believe of these stories represents, if it is some mental health issue, or how to impart some worthwhile meaning to the fantasy if it's real magic at work. By the end, The Lost Girls falls into fits of extended melodrama that at least solidify the complete realization that De Paolis has lost the point—whatever that might have been.

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