At The Movies: Together’s love story gets under your skin, risky thriller Girl On Edge skates by

At The Movies: Together’s love story gets under your skin, risky thriller Girl On Edge skates by

The Straits Times - Sports·2025-08-20 12:04

Together (M18)

91 minutes, opens on Aug 21 ★★★☆☆

The story: American husband-and-wife actors Dave Franco and Alison Brie star as unhappy partners Tim and Millie, whose relationship is infected by a supernatural force.

Tim and Millie, now in their 30s , have been together a decade and are beginning to question if it is merely out of habit. A move upstate to the countryside widens their rift as schoolteacher Millie settles into her posting in the local town and befriends a solicitous colleague (Damon Herriman), while her unemployed musician boyfriend continues to dream of rock stardom.

No need for couples counselling, though, because Together is an American body horror with its own prescription for commitment issues, courtesy of Australian writer-director Michael Shanks.

During a rainy-day hike near their new home, the two fall into a mysterious cave where they drink from a sinkhole. Thereafter, Tim is inexplicably, uncontrollably attached to Millie emotionally and physically.

They start to fuse in disgusting ways , flesh on flesh and bones cracking, however much they try to resist in their appalled confusion.

A sex scene is excruciating. Will they have to resort to a chainsaw?

Shanks’ feature debut is less frightening than squeamish in its tactile application of prosthetics and digital effects.

It is also unexpectedly a humorous co-dependency metaphor, dulled only by the generic business of a sinister religious cult and Tim’s family history of mental illness.

It runs riot actualising all the idioms about lifelong connection, two becoming one, too close for comfort and whatever else, even as Franco and Brie prove each other’s better halves in their comic interplay and their understanding of the profound romance that is this macabre fantasy.

Hot take: The Sundance Film Festival 2025’s audience favourite is a funny-revolting love story that gets under the skin.

Girl On Edge (PG13)

111 minutes, opens on Aug 21 ★★★☆☆

Zhang Zifeng in Girl On Edge.

PHOTO: SHAW ORGANISATION

The story: A figure skater training for the world championships cracks under the pressure of her coach, who is also her tiger mum.

Jiang Ning (Zhang Zifeng), the teen heroine of the Chinese psychological thriller Girl On Edge, bleeds and bruises for her sport.

She crashes practising her axels, pulls herself back up, then falls again and again to the excoriation of Wang Shuang (Ma Yili), a former skater projecting the disappointment of her failed career onto her daughter.

Into their dysfunctional relationship enters Zhong Ling (Ding Xiangyuan), a rink attendant of Jiang’s age, who free skates alone after hours for the joy of it.

The girl is a natural. She is Jiang’s only friend, but when her raw talent catches Wang’s eye and Wang offers to mentor her, she turns a dreaded rival for Jiang’s championship glory and maternal affection.

The resemblance to Hollywood star Natalie Portman’s 2010 Oscar-winning ballet phantasmagoria Black Swan betrays what is really happening.

For the still unenlightened, there is a third act to over-explain the plot twists via replays and flashbacks.

The narrative is inelegant. Nevertheless, writer-director Zhou Jinghao shows ambition and is unafraid to take risks for his feature debut, which premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

And Chinese actress Zhang (Sister, 2021) commits fully to her difficult starring role of obsession and paranoia. The skating scenes are at once mesmeric and full of tension, with amplified sound design of blades cutting into the ice like Jiang’s fracturing psyche.

Hot take: Top scores for the technical execution and performances, although there will be no medals for the tortuous tale on the madness of artistic perfection.

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