The great Ruth Cracknell deserves better than this sorry, dispiriting mess.
Based on a real "street celebrity" who recited Shakespeare on corners for a living, "Lillian's Story" has the structure of "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" or an old Hammer horror exploitation epic. Only it's given solemn art-film treatment and it pretends to be a serious examination of age, abuse, and mental illness. Lillian (Cracknell) was committed to an asylum for 40 years by her brute of a father (Barry Otto); she's sprung at the beginning of the film (why now?) by her squishy weakling of a brother (Otto again) and her aunt, and she moves into a seedy room in a red-light district, where she wanders the streets, disoriented and lonely, trying to make connections with the prostitutes and cab drivers, and flashing back to her horrific past (the younger Lillian is played by Toni Collette). The film is one of the worst-shot imaginable, with poor sound recording and ugly color (which shifts to a hideous decayed-lemon tone for the flashbacks). Even worse, each shot is so lingering and so weighted that the film end up as brutal to Cracknell and Collette as their hideous father was. We start to feel like voyeurs intruding on heavily-aestheticized horrors that don't make much sense. None of the guilty secrets revealed are terribly startling; they just feel lurid for luridness's sake, piled on in hopes of a Shocking, Overpowering Statement. The only respites are Cracknell's Shakespearean recitations; they point up the gap between Lillian's dreams and her sordid joke of a real life in a way the rest of the movie can't live up to.
Based on a real "street celebrity" who recited Shakespeare on corners for a living, "Lillian's Story" has the structure of "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" or an old Hammer horror exploitation epic. Only it's given solemn art-film treatment and it pretends to be a serious examination of age, abuse, and mental illness. Lillian (Cracknell) was committed to an asylum for 40 years by her brute of a father (Barry Otto); she's sprung at the beginning of the film (why now?) by her squishy weakling of a brother (Otto again) and her aunt, and she moves into a seedy room in a red-light district, where she wanders the streets, disoriented and lonely, trying to make connections with the prostitutes and cab drivers, and flashing back to her horrific past (the younger Lillian is played by Toni Collette). The film is one of the worst-shot imaginable, with poor sound recording and ugly color (which shifts to a hideous decayed-lemon tone for the flashbacks). Even worse, each shot is so lingering and so weighted that the film end up as brutal to Cracknell and Collette as their hideous father was. We start to feel like voyeurs intruding on heavily-aestheticized horrors that don't make much sense. None of the guilty secrets revealed are terribly startling; they just feel lurid for luridness's sake, piled on in hopes of a Shocking, Overpowering Statement. The only respites are Cracknell's Shakespearean recitations; they point up the gap between Lillian's dreams and her sordid joke of a real life in a way the rest of the movie can't live up to.