The Perfection is a 2019 thriller about two musicians who fall down a sinister path with shocking consequences.
Are you any good at doing something? I mean, like can you play a sport really well? Paint a picture? Write a story? Has it been the very thing that drives you since as long as you can remember? That’s where we get dropped at the start of writer and director Richard Shepard‘s creepy, twisted nightmare of a movie called The Perfection, where nothing is off limits and shocking is the go-to standard from frame one, getting more so as it screams forward. This is one weird ride. But does it earn its end?
Charlotte Willmore (Allison Williams) was once one of the most gifted cello players in the world, star pupil at the coveted Bachoff Academy of Music. Then, at fourteen, her mother got sick and she had to leave to be with her family, just as nine-year-old Lizzie Wells (Logan Browning as an adult) begins her training. Years later, once Charlotte’s mother passes, she is invited to return to the academy as a judge, meeting Lizzie again and finding in her an almost feral attraction. The two begin a sexual affair and a journey across China where things initially are, well, perfect. Then, out in the country on a bus, it all goes horrifically bad. Horrifically bad. Or does it? And how well can we rely on what we see?
I’m about to tread lightly onto a crowded minefield as even the slightest detail beyond what I’ve already let loose is to give way rafts of information that would readily spoil much of the absolute mindf*ck that is The Perfection. Sure, we’ve been down this road before in some ways, the obsessive, compulsive need for success in the arts a favorite of these kinds of movies. Think Whiplash or the more closely-connected Black Swan as example. However, The Perfection still manages to carve out its own little corner, playing out more as a mystery than than an exercise in madness, though madness clearly reigns.
At the top of the food chain here is Anton (Steven Weber), the head of the conservatory who discovered both girls and holds power over their fates, he of course a monster in disguise that Weber wraps himself in with chilling levels of creepy effect. More so, Williams and Browning take big leaps off the deep end in a couple of inspired performances that are the very definition of committed. While the movie itself might have its faults, none of them can be traced back to the cast. No way, no how.
So, we’re meant to question everything as the story doles out one cryptic scene after another, ramping up the violence and stomach-churning ickiness to spectacular heights of yuck. Yes, some of this is transparent, the tropes of the genre itself weakening some of the impact, and it wraps up in a final moment that doesn’t entirely have the whomp it hopes too, worrisome as it is.
Still, the deeply troubling (and honestly a bit hard to watch) themes laid out on the table and the manner they are presented make The Perfection a contentious title, perhaps purposefully so. Shepard finds several key moments that find their footing thanks to a smart visual style and laser-sharp attention to detail, yet many early images are not what they seem when the truth is revealed, leaving a chasm between expectations and reality. The film begins is if it will be a treatise on achieving perfection while it shifts to [bg_collapse view=”link-inline” color=”#ff0303″ icon=”eye” expand_text=”Show Spoiler” collapse_text=”Close” ]child sexual abuse in the back half[/bg_collapse]. That’s not entirely wrong, but does make it different than what it appeared at the start. Well, it reaches for divisiveness and by golly, it gets there.