When The Fold begins, you learn that a teenage girl has drowned. The
story then skips ahead 11 months and you then learn that the dead
girl's mother, Rebecca, is an Anglican priest and the family has moved
to the countryside. However, it's odd that Rebecca would be a priest
and move to a new parish to serve considering that she isn't much good
to others. This is because she is very screwed up and will not allow
herself to get past her daughter's death. She is clearly stuckstuck in
her marriage and stuck finding something productive with her life.
A bit later, this clueless priest does some community volunteer work,
although this isn't her choiceshe's more forced into it. However,
working with these high-risk teens suddenly becomes important to her
because the psychologically damaged Rebecca has taken a very volatile
migrant worker, Radka, under her wing. But Rebecca is a messand
instead of offering help or being professional, she begins to dream of
Radka taking the place of the dead daughter. There are some serious
problems with thismost notably that Rebecca already has another
daughtera daughter she is neglecting and who needs her. She also
ignores lots and lots of warning signs that Radka is a screwball
herself. Radka is VERY explosive, manipulative and often attempts
suicidepossibly to manipulate others or because she is a serious
danger to herself. In psychological terms, she shows a lot of
Borderline Personality traits and really needs professional help, not a
well- meaning but completely inept priest. Where does all this lead?
See the film if you are interested.
Not that I said 'if you are interested'. This might be a problem
because despite the subject matter, the film was curiously uninvolving
and I had a hard time sticking with this one. I think much of it is
because Rebecca was one of the more pathetic priests and mothers I've
seen in a film and her cluelessness seemed bizarre for someone whose
job is helping othersespecially because she is so unprofessional. It
makes you think she became a priest by correspondence schoolnot by
being an ordained member of the clergy. Making Rebecca a little less
clueless and Radka a little less obviously dangerous would have made
for a more believable film. As a result, the plot seemed mildly
interesting but flawed. As for the acting and film making, it was
pretty good but very, very low energy. Not a bad film overall but one
that just left me awfully cold and unsatisfied. Additionally, when the
film ended, there were many, many unanswered questionstoo many.