“Don’t be so shy. You’re fabulous. Could you smile?”
Abandoned by her mother, 13-year-old Maria is forced to live with her grandmother in an austere industrial town. During a violent altercation in the street, Maria meets Kristina, a young girl of the same age who aspires to become a model. To get closer to her, Maria enrolls in a mysterious modeling school where young girls prepare for the biggest casting call in the region. Her ambiguous relationship with Kristina and the intense, cult-like atmosphere of the modeling school push her into a quest for her own identity.
With Toxic (Akiplėša), Saulė Bliuvaitė offers a work that explores our relationship with our bodies and how we manage our imperfections through toxic landscapes, toxic beauty standards, and toxic relationships.
Anything to Escape
Beyond the notion of the perfect body that these girls seek, it is above all the underlying reason that is unsettling. The two teenagers we follow throughout the film are not trying to become models because it’s their dream to be a top model. They do it mainly because it’s an opportunity to escape their miserable lives. They seek to flee a toxic family environment and a town that offers them no prospects for the future.
From there, the director uses her characters and their quest to address the commodification of the body. Or rather, the use of one’s own body as a product, as currency, in the same way that we use bills or vegetables to live. They have understood (or they believe they understand) how their bodies can be their ticket out to another land.
But there is a gap between theory and reality. Or between wanting and being able. Using one’s body may seem easy, but the girls will eventually realize that simply swaying around will probably not allow them to escape. After all, there are a dozen of them in the school, and clearly, there aren’t that many openings for the winning ticket.
Which means that enrolling in this “school” to flee a toxic situation leads them directly into another toxic situation.
Sad Portrait
With Toxic, Saulė Bliuvaitė paints a rather sad portrait of the reality of young Lithuanian women.
During filming, Vytautas (the director of photography) sought to create a unique cinematography to capture the essence of the atmosphere, the environment, and the heroines themselves. This image precisely reinforces this impression of heaviness and the cage in which these girls live. Even moments that should be happier end up having a gray, depressing appearance. The more time passes, the more one gets the impression that every decision the girls make only harms them further.
So, to achieve their goal, the heroines embark on a project of perfecting their bodies to escape the life without a future in their bleak neighborhood and become models. Abandoned by their parents, they try to find their place in the world as they understand it. Navel piercing, ingestion of dangerous products, outings to places that put their health at risk, or even aggression between students – nothing really works out.
The question that haunts the viewer is: do people who live in these kinds of environments really have a chance to get out?
A Little More…
Through nuanced narration and compelling character development, Bliuvaitė delves into the complex dynamics of human relationships and the quest for identity within a collective. Here, it is a dubious modeling school. But the screenwriter could have chosen from many options, since the search for an escape at all costs almost certainly leads to downfall and self-destruction.
Toxic is a slow film that allows the viewer to fully realize what they are witnessing. It creates a heavy and depressing atmosphere without ever falling into melodrama.
It is a solid first work that makes me want to follow the career of this young director.
Toxic is presented at FCMS on April 10th and 13th, 2025.
