Toxic Review: Saulė Bliuvaitė’s Drama, Awarded at Locarno, Will Embed Itself Within You

      Note: This review was initially published as part of our 2024 Riga coverage. Toxic is currently streaming on MUBI.

      It’s unfortunate that Toxic wasn’t available during the recent discussions surrounding body horror. Saulė Bliuvaitė’s debut feature, which won the Golden Leopard at this year's Locarno Film Festival, provokes as strong a reaction with its depiction of tapeworm eggs as either The Substance or A Different Man's Faustian remedies. The twist in Bliuvaitė’s film is that such a pill is real, if only for those willing to delve into the dark web––even searching for its side effects requires caution, as the protagonist learns. Bliuvaitė’s film explores the bodily anxieties and unsettling professional pressures that contribute to the market for such horrors, centering on two teenage girls living near a Lithuanian power station, whose only hope for escape—a questionable promise of catwalk fame in Paris or Tokyo—depends on their determination to remain dangerously thin.

      Social realist filmmakers have always been drawn to the phase of youth where optimism and innocence are most vibrant. What connects the young characters in Bliuvaitė’s film to those in Andrea Arnold’s work is that they are not simply chasing their dreams; rather, they are swept up by external forces. The main antagonist in Toxic is the matriarch of a local modeling school who selectively recruits the community’s skinnier girls and aims to make them even thinner. One of the protagonists is Marija (Vesta Matulytė), whose tall, Balenciaga-inspired appearance positions her as a top candidate, despite the limp she’s had since birth. At the film's outset, Marija is new to the area, as depicted in the opening scene where she is bullied by a group of girls who mock her walking style and steal her jeans. She eventually retrieves them from Kristina (Ieva Rupeikaite), a short, tenacious girl who believes the only way to compete with the taller girls is through any means necessary, leading her to self-inflicted parasites and visits to a local predator who pays young girls for massages. After a confrontation in the rain, the two form a quick friendship.

      This content is not for the faint-hearted, but Bliuvaitė’s choice to avoid wallowing in her protagonists’ suffering or drowning them in despair imparts a captivating and rebellious energy to Toxic: the world may be filled with peril, but the girls have one another, and their home lives, while unconventional, are not devoid of affection (Marija lives with her caring grandmother, while Kristina resides with her well-meaning but hapless father). If there is a filmmaker whose style resonates with Bliuvaitė’s, it may be Sean Baker, who, despite his penchant for aestheticization, never dulls his films’ harsher elements. (It’s worth mentioning that Bliuvaitė’s background is somewhat similar to what she portrays.) Toxic remains rigorously grounded in reality, even as Bliuvaitė permits occasional stylistic flourishes: a mesmerizing dance scene featuring Kristina's dad (Giedrius Savickas) and his girlfriend stands out, as do the modeling drills orchestrated by the matron. Eager to impress her new friend, Marija swiftly joins Kristina at the modeling school and soon distinguishes herself as a potential talent—a status that will elicit equal parts disdain from the other girls and interest from the older boys in town.

      In addition to DP Vytautas Katkus’ stunningly rough visuals, the standout element of Toxic’s success lies in the exceptional performances elicited from Bliuvaitė’s two novice leads. Matulytė portrays Marija with an intense inner life that belies her inexperience, but Rupeikaite, as the film’s emotional core, is even more impressive: just wait for the scene where she brushes her Barbie’s hair in the back garden, a lit cigarette dangling from her mouth; or the moment she becomes choked up after suggesting that one of the older boys might pay her for sex, seeming surprised to realize she has a limit she won’t cross. When Toxic was featured at this year’s Locarno Film Festival alongside Laurynas Bareiša’s Drowning Dry, it marked the first instance of two Lithuanian films competing together, and they collectively won several major awards. Keep an eye out: there may be something significant happening in Lithuania.

      Toxic was screened at the Riga International Film Festival.

      Grade: A-