The Other Lamb marks the English-language debut of Małgorzata Szumowska, who in 2011 directed Juliette Binoche in the highly impressive Elles. Elles boasted a typically strong performance from the excellent Anaïs Demoustier, a performer whose career has skyrocketed over the past decade; earlier this year, she picked up the best actress award at the Césars in a ceremony which made the headlines for all the wrong reasons. As with Elles, The Other Lamb sees Szumowska elicit a robust turn from a young female lead, this time in the form of Raffey Cassidy, who in recent years has caught the eye in films such as The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Vox Lux. With this is mind, it's a pity that the overall quality of The Other Lamb doesn't come close to matching that of Cassidy's peformance.
Cassidy's Selah is a young woman born into a "flock" of females presided over by "shepherd" Michael (Michiel Huisman), who, as the group's sole male, rules unchallenged in the community's isolated forest settlement. The women are divided into two categories - wives and daughters, clad respectively in red and blue - and Selah, whose mother died giving birth to her, appears to be a model member of the group. The self-anointed Michael, whose image is prominently displayed on a large mural on the side of a caravan, frequently selects a different woman from the group to receive his "grace", and there's little doubt as to what this involves.
An intrusion from the outside world forces the cult to suddenly abandon their camp, and the group set off on a long, hard trek to find a new site. During the journey, Michael's cruel behaviour escalates, prompting Selah to question both the community's hierarchy and its leader. Selah grows close to Sarah (Denise Gough), a "broken" wife ostracised from the group by Michael, and it's through Sarah that Selah learns of the mother she never knew. Trudging through the countryside in all weathers, the group happen upon a dilapidated house which looks as if it might work as a new base, but Michael dismisses the property as having belonged to "broken people". Therefore, the gruelling hike continues, as Selah's resentment of Michael starts to come to the boil.
The Other Lamb features a fairly promising setup and, as already mentioned, a fine performance from Raffey Cassidy (furthermore, Michał Englert's cinematography is superb), so it's unfortunate that the story is both thin and poorly-paced. The Other Lamb's case is not helped by it appearing on the tail of a couple of other recent films on a similar theme: Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood and Mary Harron's Charlie Says, while both centring on the Manson Family, covered similar ground far more successfully. Going back a bit further, Ti West's excellent The Sacrament - which basically retold the Jim Jones/Peoples Temple story - is a good example of a strong, direct film focusing on a cult, while The Endless demonstrated how a more oblique take on the subject can work. The Other Lamb, on the other hand, simply doesn't have enough about it to warrant a recommendation; it hovers between arthouse and horror, seemingly unsure of its own identity.
Darren Arnold
Image: TrustNordisk
