Everyone has fallen in love with an image that is unattainable. But what happens when it becomes so unreachable that it begins tearing your life apart? What happens when you begin losing your job over it? What happens when you’re unable to engage with anyone else because of it? And when, like Victor Frankenstein, the dream world has become the last paradise from the mounting desolation around you?
Stephen Rutterford’s award-winning debut feature, Finding Ophelia asks these questions and a whole lot more! Brace yourself, and I do mean using a five-point seat harness to watch this. Finding Ophelia is not only one of the most visually stunning films of 2021, but also one of the most original. Allegorical and experimental, evocative and ingenious, Finding Ophelia is cooler than Last Year at Marienbad (1961), madder than 12 Monkeys (1995), and way more dangerous than anything you’ll find in Inception (2010).
The film’s protagonist is William Edgar, a successful and self-confident advertising executive who becomes haunted by mystifying visions of a beckoning woman. She is forever reaching out to him and yet always seems to be leaving. Suffering from insomnia, William continues his search as he begins wandering the empty, hellish nights of New York. He sails closer and closer to edge of sanity, until not even the eye of Horus can save him.
Allison’s Full Sundance 2021 Coverage
The success of Finding Ophelia on the 2021 awards scene is well-deserved. It’s won Best Mystery Film at Cannes World Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Awards, and New York International Film Awards. As well as Best Feature Film at the London Independent Film Awards. And rightly so.
The film’s leads are gripping throughout. Jimmy Levar and Christina Chu-Ryan are effortlessly cool and eternally anguished. The supporting cast are equally impressive, with my favourites being Steve Schaefer as The Bartender (I found all of your jokes funny, Steve!); Emily Wendorff as The Barista, whose smile is slowly stolen from her; Annie Hansen as the Screaming Lady; the entire Caterpillar People; and the Chalk Children (played by Eva & Isabel Rutterford).
Special mention must also go to the incredible throbbing soundtrack by The Prolificators/DVR + EFKTS, Ben Runyan, and BrainOrchestra, which steadily unclasps your mind from whatever grip on reality it had going into the film. Costume design by Morgane Press also deserves praise for hitting the mark each time.
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However, none of this would have been possible without the phenomenal effort undertaken by Stephen Rutterford himself. He not only wrote Finding Ophelia, but also directed, produced, edited and co-scored the film, as well as tasking himself with cinematography and colour design duties. And it is fair to say that, in all of these aspects. Rutterford has excelled. But his masterstroke is in creating a coherent vision as sharp and slick as anything you’ll see in Hollywood today. Despite whatever its budgetary limitations were, Finding Ophelia never looks underfunded.
I can’t imagine the NYC tourism board will be keen on this movie, but for everyone else (including Edgar Allen Poe fans) this is a must! Hypnotic, psychedelic and surreal, Finding Ophelia – or as I like to call it, ‘Ophelia’s Revenge’ – is well worth your time, money and the subsequent nightmares that may follow after. Because be careful what you look for. You may just find it after all.
