Life is fragile, sometimes even a person who is confident in everything he does makes a mistake and that moment will change his life forever. Hope, the main character in Bobby Marno's new film, lives one of those moments, and we viewers experience it with her. Hope, played by the likeable Sadhbh Larkin-Coyle, is a YouTube vlogger: an extreme adventurer who travels everywhere climbing, swimming and exploring. She films her exploits and posts videos online to share with her followers. The film begins by setting the scene and building the character of Hope as a sweet but rebellious young woman; We see her make her daily life, work her mundane job, and interact lovingly with her father. A free spirit, the 9 to 5 rat race is certainly not for her; Hope's whole life is her next adventure.
Larkin-Coyle is a ray of sunshine in these early scenes but, good as she is, these moments are full of exposition and at times quite boring to sit through. I completely understand Marno's reasoning behind them, it's to give us an overview of Hope's character and help us relate to her, but they slow the film down when it should be speeding things up. Plus, Larkin's natural exuberance has already cemented her audience's liking.
Director: Jane Qian
Writer: Jane Qian
Stars: Samual Charles, Francesca Galassi, Brooklynn Reeves
Matthew Åkerfeldt's cinematography is stunning and the Irish landscape is beautifully photographed, but there are plenty of incidental and establishing shots of Hope walking, trekking and traveling across fields and meadows. They look beautiful and help establish the vastness of the Irish wilds and the very specific details of Hope's journey through them, but they don't really move the story forward and, when things start to go wrong a third of the way through, only the most patient of spectators will have succeeded.
Editing between Hope's vlogs and real life is effortless, with smooth and fast transitions between shots. The editing also achieves the delicate task of showing broken limbs up close and not reveling too much in the agony involved in dealing with them. For audiences, the worst moments aren't so much the sights (despite some great and gruesome special effects) but the sounds Larkin omits: her anguished screams of pain and frustration leave a lasting impression. Most of us have never heard these sounds before, but we know exactly what they mean. All credit to the work of the sound design team who deserves a lot of praise.
Sadhbh Larkin Coyle's performance cannot be underestimated, she does a good job of suggesting two aspects of Hope's character: the reckless and intrepid adventurer who is confident in her abilities and likes to take risks, and secondly, that she is logical enough and determined as to save his own. life.