‘Toxic’: Locarno Review

Dir: Saule Bliuvaite. Lithuania. 2024. 99 mins.

Toxicity takes many forms in Saule Bliuvaite’s gritty and keenly observed coming-of-age debut from Lithuania, the winner of Locarno’s Golden Leopard. It’s everywhere from the environment to the poisonous attitude its female protagonists are tacitly and actively encouraged to take towards themselves. Rooted in the director’s own teenage experiences, this is a raw and uncompromising look at the pressures girls face in places with few prospects but plenty of access to the internet.

Thrums with teen spirit

Bliuvaite takes a similar approach to these bleak surroundings as that of US director Sean Baker (Red Rocket, The Florida Project), avoiding poverty porn and looking directly at the teenagers rather than down on them and celebrating the surprising friendships that can grow in the unlikeliest of places. Toxic’s win at Locarno along with the social-media buzzword nature of the title should help it to gain traction both on and beyond the festival circuit.

Marija (Vesta Matulyte) has been dumped with her grandmother in a small Lithuanian town where every backdrop is defaced by industry, from cooling towers to pylons. 13 year-old Marija’s new-kid status and the limp she was born with make her ripe for bullying. An early scene in which her jeans are stolen from a changing room declares Bliuvaite’s intent to employ more experimental techniques to take us into the teen’s headspace. As Marija gazes into a locker, naturalism is briefly jettisoned, so that it becomes a cavernous space. These sorts of touches can be found through the movie and it is to the writer/director’s credit that she incorporates them in non-flashy ways that never break the mood.

The stolen jeans lead to a catfight with Kristina (Ieva Rupeikaite), a feisty local kid whose home life, though loving, is sketchy. In the way of teenagers, this negative energy soon becomes positive and a friendship is born. Kristina is the more daring of the two, believing herself to be more street smart. These girls are trying to grow up fast, hanging out with older boys who ply them with drink and drugs with a view to something in return. 

The main outlet for the girls’ dreams, however, is a model agency that has come to town offering a potential ticket out. Desperation meets determination here, with every teen in the district vying for selection, even though the outfit has scam written all over it. The girls are poked and measured as they practise their catwalk stroll: bulimia, ingesting cotton wool or even tapeworms considered a price worth paying for selection.

The cool palette employed by DoP Vytautas Katkus - also a writer/director in his own right with a string of shorts to his name including Cannes-screened Cherries - particularly pays off in the scenes with the modelling agency, emphasising the girls’ youth and vulnerability. Occasional bursts of electro scoring from Gediminas Jakubka add to the sense of alienation. Toxic also benefits from a pair of excellent performances from the young, first-time leads, with Matulyte’s more introspective approach dovetailing perfectly with the mercurial energy Rupeikaite brings to Kristina.

Bliuvaite - who has several shorts to her name and co-wrote Lithuania’s 2022 foreign language Oscar submission Isaac - deserves attention for the way she highlights eating disorders and body issues without exploiting her teenage cast or making such choices look inviting. Throwing up is devoid of glamour and a video Marija watches about tapeworms is the stuff of nightmares.

Toxic’s narrative is tossed and turned by the maelstrom of the girls’ emotions as much as by plot development but its mix of positive and negative energies makes it thrum with teen spirit. “Confidence is the most important thing,” Marija is told, Bliuvaite has plenty of that and the talent to back it up.