Review: September Says

Director:  Ariane Labed

Stars:  Pascale Kann, Rakhee Thakrar, Mia Tharia

From her striking acting roles in the films of her husband Yorgos Lanthimos to equally notable and diverse performances for such luminaries as Joanna Hogg, Peter Strickland and Brady Corbet, Ariane Labed has become a reassuring presence in the European art-house scene. Someone who’s involvement suggests a mark or quality or originality. September Says sees Labed step behind the camera for a predictably arch but engaging coming-of-age tale, one that seasons the grit and grime of British kitchen sink drama with a strong dose of magical realism. 

July (Mia Tharia) and September (Pascale Kann) are teenage sisters – possibly twins – ostracised from their schoolmates. They are perceived as different and unkempt. September positively bristles at the challenges of their bullies, playing up a feral persona by grunting and growling at their aggressors. July is more shy and retiring, which mirrors her relationship with her sister in which – as the title suggests – September calls the shots. When July develops feelings for class hunk Ryan (Maeron Libomi), tensions escalate, and an unwise but relatable overture from July causes both girls to be suspended from school. Their mother Sheela (Rakhee Thakrar) decides to decamp with the girls to the Irish suburbs and an old family home in the hopes of finding some breathing space. 

September Says fizzes with reminiscences of adolescence, from the protective enclosure of a homemade fort in the living room to the rites of passage that is petty theft from a high street chemist. September’s sing-song instructions to her sister imbue their interactions with a nursery rhyme cadence, as though the two girls live in their own self-actualised reality adjacent to the real world. It’s the world of childhood daydream and imagination, and Labed’s film shows the inevitable sadness that comes when that world is infiltrated and overruled by the real and the adult. The film crackles along the borders where those two sensibilities meet. 

Sheela grows more and more distant and withdrawn from her brood, as though gradually becoming afraid of their power. Between the animalistic noises that both girls – but especially September – are prone to, to the power dynamic between the sisters, Labed’s film conjures fond memories of Canadian werewolf favourite Ginger Snaps. Although here, July – the more withdrawn sister – is the one who finds her interest in sexuality blossoming and emboldening. A mostly benign encounter with a WiFi repairman has a tangible sexual component, exaggerated by July’s terrarium of worms becoming a potent vaginal symbol within the scene. 

Both young actors are terrific, embodying the ungainly mezzanine places between youth and adulthood, mimicking sexually suggestive YouTube dance videos with a clumsy innocence. This is countered by Sheela dancing by herself – unseen – upstairs. Her manner is closer to that of jubilant exorcism; an encumbered and tired single mother shaking off her burdens. Thakrar, for her part, counters the potential savagery of the girls with something more naturalistic and down-to-earth. A distant mother who doesn’t know what to do. Sheela’s relative irresponsibility that evening – bringing a man from the pub home to her bed – further complicates the matrix of sexuality in the house. Labed’s decision to play the sex scene for comic relief with the addition of an untested internal monologue is a strange one. A deliberately discordant keystroke. 

In retrospect it can perhaps be seen as a warning of greater tonal shocks to come. A night on the beach encountering the acceptance of the local youths engenders a powerful change in the film, one that unsuspecting viewers might find tough to accept. As the bonds of sisterhood are tested, September Says skirts close to the fringes of horror before boldly stepping off with a twist that carves a jagged rupture in the narrative. Labed pushes it hard, employing a stuttering motif of editing between frames as though the film itself is struggling to cope with the developments. It’s a volatile descent that ejects us back into the real world without any sense of safety. That feeling of dislocation is potent though, and more welcome than the ambivalence of more timid efforts.

September Says belongs in a fast-growing lineage of films directed by women in Britain that mingle the mundane and the magical, joining Andrea Arnold’s Bird and Luna Carmoon’s incredible Hoard is an informal loose trilogy on the animalistic intensity of working class womanhood and the often supernatural sensation entwined in the pains of growing up and of letting go.

Labed has now emerged provocatively for the second time.