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Eevery now and then, a strange, forgotten part of life on Covid disturbs my thoughts. Remember when we used to fake happy hour merriment on House party app? Or when Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor made it a very scary movie stealing diamonds from Harrods during closing time? Or how about when people started doing unhealthy things and Netflix documentaries about someone who has an unhealthy obsession with octopus?
The failure of My Octopus Teacher made it all the more difficult for the people who did “he made the octopus teacher have sex with an octopus” (time saver: he didn’t) to win the unforgivable Oscar for best documentary (Combinationsyou were robbed) and then, although it was not a direct inspiration for history, it paved the way for the success of Shelby Van Pelt’s best-selling book Beautiful Creatures in 2022. This book, which relies on the relationship between an elderly cleaner and an angry octopus, gave to those who still want to ask the many questions that are asked during the summer. now, without fail, this change arrives on Netflix to be presented in the growing section of the “inspirational octopus movie”.
It’s a film that can also be on the list of shows aimed at older people, along with gentle daytime watches like Nonnas, Our Spirits at Night, Juanita and Other. As the films that receive in the actor that we have not seen recently as we did before – Sally Field in this case – and give him more time to appear than he was given in more than ten years – his last role was in 2015 Hello, My Name is Doris. I’m not sure how the film would work without it – it adds a great voiceover – but with Field balancing comedy and drama in a film that doesn’t always move gracefully, the whole thing almost floats.
Field and Tova, a water cleaner in a beautiful coastal town who struggles to connect with those around her, are still nursing the trauma of her son’s death years ago. Now he likes to be alone, which he resembles Marcellus, the old octopus voiced by Dr Octopus himself, Alfred Molina. He hates people, clearly responding that he is trapped in a tank with them, but he appreciates the small calmness of Tova who talks to him in detail about his life. When Tova injures her foot, she is forced to reconsider her loneliness by calls from a retired senior citizen whose late husband has reserved a place for her to find an answer.
His loneliness is disturbed by the arrival of Cameron (Lewis Pullman), a wannabe rocker who starts working with him. The two initially argue but when Tova realizes what they have, their whole life is sad and awkward, they find friendship, with the help of Marcellus.
True to Molina’s commanding voice, Beautiful Creatures is a simple, first-person drama about broken people trying to get back together. It’s relaxed without surprises, director Olivia Newman’s modest success after a commercially successful but often humorous adaptation of another popular book, the Reese Witherspoon-smothered Where the Crawdads Sing. This is a very limited film with a lot of focus and a lot of fun because of it. I would say that the focus can sometimes be too much with romantic subplots that are not abundant (Colm Meaney for Field is beautiful, but Sofia Black D’Elia for Pullman) and stretched sitcoms that often turn regular people into buffoons, but when given a straight job, and like a heart beat every time. Very few films allow older female characters to deal with the ghosts of the past and the fears of the future without treating them as characters or figures to be followed and while there is room for more exposition, it gives an over-produced film a different flavor.
Help in that department also comes from the octopus of Molina who is not always made to feel like a natural element of the story (there are long moments when it seems that Newman has forgotten about him completely) but when he returns to the front at the end, there is a good way but sweet and rewarding and very rewarding, he can leave us in tears, sweet enough that it is not the most important thing. Strange may be a stretch, but worth doing.
