Mayday review: a dark fantasy in Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch kingdom

Myths often attempt to structure things that humanity considers inexplicable, and for whatever reason, women have often been placed in that category. Misogyny has shaped religious and cultural beliefs around the world, turning mythological women into figures of fear and catastrophe. Pandora’s curiosity causes her to open a box that unleashes evil and despair in a previously innocent world. Horrible figures like the succubus and the gello they are linked to male fear of female sexuality and social expectations of female fertility, respectively. And mermaids have long positioned themselves as deceptive figures who turn against them the supposedly natural tendency of men for protection and assistance, luring sailors to their death. Won’t anyone think of the poor beleaguered guys surrounded by predators ?!

Karen Cinorre’s indie fantasy film May Day he is aware of the calamities that fables often link to women, and he deliberately positions himself in conversation with that tension. Narratively and thematically similar to Zack Snyder Sucker Punch, but without the masculine gaze (or the tiny outfits) that Sucker Punch used as elegant bombast, May Day it also focuses on a young woman struggling with abuse and objectification. After falling into what appears to be an alternate world, he joins a group of others who have rallied against the men. In a modernized version of a siren song, they attract sailors and pilots with a radio distress signal. They pose as hapless girls who need help. And when would-be white knights come to lend a hand, they’re like fish in a barrel.

There is a lot of storytelling potential for May Day, already the idea of ​​a fantastic twist on the tried-and-true action setting of women getting revenge on men. (This summer you’ve certainly seen a variety of straightforward riffs in this formula: Gunpowder shake, Shake, The protégé, Kate.) May Day it had a whole compass of directions in which it could expand and elaborate. What brought women to this place? What are its geographical limits? Have women traveled backward or forward in time? What are conversations like with your peers around the world and how do you strategize for an endless gender war? What is your long-term end? What is a world without men like?

So it’s a disappointment when May Day instead, he sticks to a narrow, character-driven plot, rather than indulging in the world-building necessary to contextualize the fantasy. In a nameless seaside town in a vaguely mid-century time, Ana (Grace Van Patten) works as a waitress at a wedding venue. The job is demanding. He only has one friend, his co-worker Dimitri (Théodore Pellerin). And she is being harassed and abused by a superior. In a devastatingly rare moment, Ana heads for the kitchen freezer, and her boss follows her and corners her. The scene is already oppressively uncertain, thanks to cinematographer Sam Levy keeping the audience’s perspective out of the room, and Ana’s plea “No!”, Heard when the man opens and closes the door, only gets worse.

But vicious men are the norm in May Day. The local chef tells her with a grimace: “The last girl didn’t make it.” The bride (Mia Goth) at the wedding Ana is working on comes in crying, thanks to her choking and screaming boyfriend. And the unflappable way bathroom attendant June (Juliette Lewis) reacts to all this trauma is a telling sign: “It feels like a nightmare. That’s normal ”, he tells Ana and the girlfriend. Living under the control of violent men seems like an inescapable and unavoidable trap, until Ana is suddenly transported. With complementary blue and orange tints, flickering lights, and a Sylvia Plath-evoking journey through an oven and then an ocean, Cinorre creates a dreamlike sequence reminiscent of Alice falling into Wonderland.

When Ana surfaces, she is at the forefront of an endless war, with each battle led by the charming and jealous Marsha (again goth). With a cheery smile and unwavering moral certainty, Marsha introduces Ana to her companions Bea (Havana Rose Liu) and Gert (the French singer and actress Soko), who live together in an abandoned submarine, and they all come together to attract and kill men. They lure pilots and sailors with distress signals and then drive them into storms, for their boats to sink, or wait for them to parachute onto the beach and shoot them. Ana cannot remember her previous life and is not sure if she is dreaming or in the afterlife, but her new friends reassure her: “The girls are better off dead, because now we are free.”

However, what women are free to do becomes a repeating quality fairly quickly (attract, shoot, repeat), and May Day it doesn’t do much to differentiate between these sequences. On the one hand, this narrow focus allows the performances of Van Patten and Goth to take center stage, and Goth is particularly fascinating: She has always been good at conveying bitter anguish and ethical murkiness, from A cure for wellness for Suspiria for High life. Marsha takes on a vibrant and subversive life in Goth’s hands, especially during a scene where she lazily lights a cigarette, sends out a distress signal, jokes “We don’t have any” when the man she’s talking to asks how many souls are on board . ship, hears the destruction of her ship after she sends him faulty coordinates, and then casually asks Ana, “Do you like radio?” That sassy and carefree bravado energizes May Day, and the role of a cult leader should materialize in the future of Goth.

On the other hand, Cinorre limits viewers’ understanding of these characters by skimping on the conditions that brought them here and rushing through friction that eventually puts them at odds. Other elements also feel out of place (a scene that mimics 1950s-style musicals; a recurring bird motif), and May Day He frustrates any attempt at understanding by shifting his focus from women fighting men to women fighting each other. This latter approach, and how it leads to the false “Go girl!” energy from lines like “You fight like a girl!” it is not as subversive as Cinorre might think. Still, Goth is a scene stealer, and some of Levy’s images are memorable in their otherworldly quality. Cinorre’s initially provocative vision of revenge at least makes May Day worth a look.

May Day It opens in limited theatrical release and on VOD on October 1, 2021.