Broken (Rufus Norris, 2012): UK

Reviewed by Cecilia Gonzalez. Viewed at Metropolitan Metro 4, Santa Barbara

Families can grow together, and they can grow apart, in which they become broken. The film, Broken shows the struggles of three different families that are also neighbors of each other. The first family starts with a young red-head girl by the name of Susan whom finds a used condom in her room. From this first shot, there is a clue that Susan may be participating is sexual acts. She is then confronted by her angry father who finds the condom wrapper. From this bright incident I discovered that Susan’s father is very protective of her and there isn’t a mother to confront her about the issue. After Susan is confronted about her sexual encounter she is asked whom she had been intimate with and quickly, and falsely answers, Rick Oswald, the neighborhood young-man whom seems a bit unstable–emotionally.
The setting of this film appears to be England. The lighting is very high key due to the gloomy and gray days that permeate through camera to the screen. The high-key lighting also contributes to the sad moments in this film. For instance, when Susan’s father finds out she had sex with Rick, he reacts very aggressively by running to his driveway where Rick is washing his car and attacks Rick. Susan’s father jumps on top of Rick and starts beating him. This violent event formed my first reaction towards Susan’s father, and that’s that he is an angry and violent men, but the reason for that I wasn’t sure of at first. It wasn’t until more information was disclosed about Susan and her other sisters that I learned that their mother had died.
Mother’s become an implicit symbol throughout this film. Two out of the three mothers in this film either died, or abandoned their families. This set the tone for the next family which consisted of Archie, a lawyer-father, Skunk, the young, innocent, and compassionate young girl, the quite son, and Anya whom lives with them. This families wife and mother left the family at a young age to be with a policeman. This created abandonment issues for Skunk because she lived in fear of any other woman whom her father became involved with would leave them as well.
Many insecurities were exposed in this film.

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Published:
02.04.13 / 12pm
Category:
Films, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2013