Good Favour

Rewarding if you have the patience Essentially a parable about the nature of religious extremism and, to a lesser extent, the perils of self-imposed isolationism, Good Favour, Rebecca Daly's third feature (after The Other Side of Sleep and Mammal), is far more interested in asking questions than answering them. Functioning as a kind of blank canvas onto which viewers can project their own interpretation, a cinematic Rorschach image, if you will, the film is not especially concerned with either standard character arcs or narrative beats (indeed, it makes latter-day Terrence Malick seem densely plotted). Instead, it works primarily as a pseudo-allegorical examination of the possibility for hermetic religious groups to see the miraculous in scientifically explainable phenomena and pure coincidence. For many, the slow pace culminating in a highly ambiguous ending will prove too alienating, but for me, the deliberate narrative style is perfectly matched to the unsettling and studied story Daly wishes to tell, and the dénouement is as well-handled a piece of cinematic ambiguity as I've seen in a long while. For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/yC9Bd