Nocebo
An illness with no name, of myriad debilitating symptoms but no underlying pathology which can be identified by her doctor, it has blighted the life of children’s fashion designer Christine, potentially on the verge of placing her line with a major distributor but unable to cope with the daily demands which leave her shaking, exhausted and overly dependent on constant medication.
Help arrives in the form of Diana, at first serving as a housemaid and cook and helping with daughter Roberta but soon ministering to Christine’s ailments with Filipino folk remedies; solicitous of the needs of her mistress, perhaps excessively so, Christine’s pragmatic husband Felix is suspicious of what he regards as “woo woo,” but asking Diana to step back only causes her to be more determined to retain her position in the household.
Directed by Lorcan Finnegan from a script written by long term collaborator Garret Shanley, Nocebo sees Proxima’s Eva Green as Christine, her design concepts inspired by her travels around the world and her fabrics woven with strands of the of pain and grief of a distant land, and Chai Fonacier as Diana, perhaps a blessing, perhaps a curse, but manipulative and operating with her own agenda.
Finnegan having explored becoming lost in the corridors of the mind in Without Name and the home as a place of no safety in Vivarium, these ideas come together in Nocebo, Christine determined to become healthy and knowing that her illness is unreasonable so willing to accept a course beyond reason, pushing Felix (Approaching the Unknown‘s Mark Strong) further from her, believing – rightly – that he considers her illness to be primarily psychological.
Initially seeming to parallel Todd Haynes’ Safe which saw Julianne Moore apparently incapacitated by the everyday environment around her, Nocebo takes a different course with aspects of folk horror in Diana’s treatments and her explanation of her understanding of them with some moments even recalling The Omen, but while the vials and herbs are laid out the charm never takes hold as strongly as it should.
Green’s contract seeming to stipulate she be allowed to present another masterclass in madness, Finnegan allows her free reign which is matched by Fonacier’s resolve, but with the haunting abstractions of Without Name and the menacing mystery of Vivarium displaced by a drip-fed reveal already obvious from the opening scene Nocebo places too much importance on the destination rather than balancing it with the trials of the walk through fire to reach it.
Nocebo is on general release from Friday 9th December
