Joanne Mitchell, perhaps best known to most for playing Sandra Flaherty in British soap opera Emmerdale, has a long history with Pigeon Shrine FrightFest. For years she has been producing the films of her husband, and fellow Emmerdale actor, Dominic Brunt, but she has also screened her own short films and has taken part in the festival’s New Blood initiative. This year Mitchell and FrightFest level up their relationship as she not only screens her debut feature Broken Bird, but also opens the 25th anniversary of the festival with it.
Opening FrightFest can be terrifying enough, but the 25th celebrations add extra pressure for the film in question to be a good one. Thankfully, Mitchell’s Broken Bird is an excellently weird character study into a very peculiar young woman. Broken Bird places the audience into the isolated world of Sybil (Rebecca Calder), a quiet soul with a love of poetry and the fashion of the 1920s. She lives alone and seems to have little in the way of family or friends. Where she comes alive though is through her work as an undertaker. Amongst the serenity of the dead, Sybil becomes empowered and peaceful. However, the arrival of a new body sends Sybil down a dangerous and depraved spiral.
Broken Bird’s story and tone riff heavily off both Rose Glass’ Saint Maud, and Lucky McKee’s May, but Mitchell retains her own voice amongst the parallels. The visuals of Broken Bird are superb. The colour palette switches from cold and clinical blues and greys to more orangey and autumnal colours. These contrasting hues represent the duelling sides of Sybil subtly enhancing the audience’s connection to, and understanding of, her. Whereas much of the world is captured in a very calculated way, the pub in which Sybil performs open mic poetry is lit to feel cosy, it being one of Sybil’s few safe spaces. The safest of all Sybil’s spaces though exists within her mind, and sequences played out via her imagination are a vibrant fantasy of a heavily romanticised version of the 1920s. Here the make-up and costumes really shine, their lushness becoming as alluring to the viewer as the fantasy is to Sybil.
As beautiful as Broken Bird is to look at, without a strong actor in the role of Sybil, the film would fall apart. Sybil is that classic weird outsider archetype and in a less sturdy pair of hands the character could venture into comedy territory. Due to a fantastic performance from Calder, rather than laugh at Sybil’s wild antics, the audience is invested in her plight. There is the opportunity for the occasional smirk, but importantly the viewer is always with Sybil, these fleeting moments mirror Sybil’s own glee at what is happening. Calder’s performance is exceptionally considered and her seamless manoeuvring from prim, proper, and composed, to banshee level ferocity is what really helps sell not only the character, but the film too.
For a feature debut, Broken Bird is about as solid as they come. Mitchell has clearly spent the last few years finessing her craft before making the move from short to feature, and that hard work and dedication has paid off. Part psychological chiller, part Gothic romance, and featuring a healthy dose of grim occurrences, Broken Bird is delightfully dark and a perfect way to begin FrightFest’s 25th year.
Broken Bird
Summary
Featuring a killer performance from Rebecca Calder, Broken Bird is a bleak, Gothic psychological thriller that is capable of comfortably sitting alongside Saint Maud and May.
Broken Bird was reviewed at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2024.
