Blue My Mind is a 2018 Swiss fantasy about a 15-year-old girl who faces an overwhelming transformation that calls her entire existence into question.
By no means are the movies lacking coming-of-age stories, the digital racks packed with titles going back decades about those turbulent, traumatic years, spinning the hormonal changes in young bodies into all sorts of cinematic fare, from comedy to drama to outright horror. Now comes Swiss filmmaker Lisa Brühlmann‘s entry, her full length feature debut tweaking the premise with some largely effective metaphorical imagery that mixes in a bit of everything, serving up a tantalizing dark fairytale that does offbeat just as intended.
Mia (Luna Wedler) seems your typical teenage girl, struggling with finding her identity as she lingers in the confusing years between girl and woman. She is short-tempered, particularly with her mother (Regula Grauwiller) and yearns for her own space, having a great deal of trouble fitting it at school. She soon attracts the attention of local badgirl Gianna (Zoë Pastelle Holthuizen), a pretty but troubled girl who leads a small group of rough outcasts. She invites Mia into the fold, quickly exposed to pornography, petty theft, and a dangerous game of light asphyxion. Mia quickly finds comfort in these emotional changes. However, more worrisome are the physical changes. You see, Mia is ever so slowly turning into a fish.
Your immediate reaction to this is probably a giggle, but that’s really the furthest thing Brühlmann is aiming for, and indeed, steers well clear of it. What we get instead is a story (written by Brühlmann) about literal metamorphosis that is both weirdly captiving and a little shocking. Body horror is a touchy line to tread upon in movies, and to keep it out of in-your-face grotesque is probably not all that easy, yet Blue My Mind manages to flirt with the ickiness of some disturbing moments, mostly as Mia battles these changes rather than accept them, while never quite making it repelling. Sort of.
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What’s perhaps most intriguing about what happens to Mia is how Mia contends with it, the movie treating these bizarre physical changes with a purposeful authenticity. Why does Mia suddenly crave the fish in her mother’s fish tank? Why is she pouring salt into tap water? Why are her toes growing together? What’s with the gills? Brühlmann avoids the temptation to make these fantastical moments into some sort of dreamy flight of fancy but rather a dangerous and frightening mutation that signals a point of no return for the young girl. For every girl in fact.
Working in its favor is Brühlmann’s direction, skillfully using some subtle visuals to paint around the obvious. I love an early cutaway with a fan blowing Mia’s air in slowed time that makes her look like she’s already floating beneath the surface in an ebony sea. It’s touches like this peppered throughout that give the admittedly traditional storyline significant weight. That’s not to take away from Wedler’s genuinely impactful performance. She’s on screen for nearly every frame and lulls us into her often savage evolution with an intoxicating confidence that absolutely resists any thoughts of ridiculousness. Holthuizen keeps up her end of the bargain as well, balancing her role as temptor and influencer with razor sharp ferocity. Even while the film itself doesn’t always close the gaps as satisfactorily as it might, these young actors are reason enough to tune in.
Blue My Mind is not going to be everyone, especially those going in thinking this another mermaid tale with lots of big fins and open water splashing about. It’s not that at all. This is a turbulent story of sexual awakening and discovery with some bold gut punch moments. Whether you accept Brühlmann’s eccentric vision of such will be the real hurdle.