You Were Never Really Here
Lynne Ramsay (WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN) journeys with Joaquin Phoenix into the mind of an ex-soldier whose own demons are as brutal as the actions of his adversaries.
Ramsay’s stark inversion of the noir thriller is a devastatingly brutal portrayal of one man’s battle with repression and abuse, anchored by a rage-fuelled, Cannes-winning performance from Joaquin Phoenix. Joe is a Gulf War veteran and former FBI agent turned killer-for-hire, specialising in saving victims from child sex rings. He lives at home with his ailing mother. When Nina, a US Senator’s daughter is kidnapped, he is contracted to dispense with the perpetrators and save the girl. Having located Nina in a seedy New York brothel, Joe’s escape plan suddenly derails, unleashing a maelstrom of violence that ultimately takes him deeper into the hallucinatory darkness and closer to the truth.
Working from Jonathan Ames’ 2013 novel, Ramsay is more concerned with the psyche of her unhinged protagonist than she is with the action, and she eschews the spoken word in favour of Phoenix’s eloquent, line-ravaged face. (source: London Film Festival)