Written and directed by leading actress Kristina Klebe, a world-renowned pianist’s life is shattered after a devastating accident which leaves her wheelchair-bound and dependent on her younger boyfriend as both caregiver and companion. As her recovery becomes increasingly isolating, disturbing visions, fractured memories, and dangerous obsessions begin to blur the line between reality and nightmare. Also starring: Byron Clohessy, Laila Robins, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Robert Clohessy and Kim Director.
In this day of people shying away from sex scenes and audiences becoming less comfortable with overt intimacy and nudity, it’s a bold move from Kristina Klebe to open Noxturne with exactly that. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like one that pays off. It’s preoccupation with the sexual chemistry between Mia (Kristina Klebe) and Roman (Byron Clohessy) makes it difficult to decipher what Noxturne actually wants to be, and what tone it’s truly trying to set.
When it does eventually establish itself more, it sadly comes across as transparent and somewhat heavy handed. Its attempts to use the surreal and blur those lines of reality and fantasy are not effective. They feel at odds with the story of Noxturne, and undercut building necessary sincerity to its story of manipulation, coercion and abuse. It needed to scale things back, take that tone down a notch and focus on the psychological factor which plays such a key part in this story.
Although, it also takes the story far too long to get to the crux of the issue. It spends too much time on establishing the relationship between Mia and Roman when it didn’t need to. Partly because the characters aren’t particularly developed, Roman in particular feels entirely flat and like a character that would typically only be featured in the opening scenes, rather than a key player. That disparity with the progression means that Noxturne is fairly frustrating viewing, it only scratches the surface, and its exploration feels somewhat superficial.
Considering that it is drawing from personal experience, it feels like this may have been too close to Kristina Klebe to be able to take a step back and make the necessary adjustments to give Noxturne more power and impact. However, Klebe does certainly give this performance her all, she throws a lot of intensity into her portrayal and does well to capture the vulnerability and reactiveness. It’s trickier to judge Byron Clohessy’s performance as his character feels too obvious, but he does undoubtedly tick all the right boxes for your quintessential selfish, egotistical man child.
Noxturne has a good concept and it’s always great to see films exploring the many different facets of abusive relationships and recovery, but it feels like this one got lost along the way. The stylistic or artistic choices can tend to come across as distracting or forced. Particularly when it drifts into horror territory, it’s simply trying much too hard and detracting rather than adding to itself. It’s missing that humble touch to ground out the heavier nature to the topic. It has the best of intentions but puts its focus in the wrong places, under developing the characters and story in favour of interpretive scenes and intimacy.
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