This movie was one of my favourites, this year. It has a well written plot, excellent storytelling, great characters, laughs and tears... and a satisfying ending. 🤗
The story revolves around a couple of Puppeteers who perform at a small village to entertain the rough crowd who lives there. It is a remote place where law and order is barely existent. There is a policeman in the town... but for the most part, the angry inhabitants make justice by their own hands, no matter if they are right or wrong. It doesn't help that they are drunk most of the time.
Judy and Punch are the main characters of the story and we follow their lives and daily routines, as they perform together on certain nights, in a local pub full of drunk and brute men. Their show is loved by the crowd and it reflects the feeling of the town. The more violent the show is, the more the villagers like it. 🙄
Punch is often quite drunk himself but since he keeps on performing and delivering the kind of show that the public wants to see, he sees no reason to change his behaviour, despite the many promises to the contrary to his wife. Punch writes the arguments for their Marionette show and takes most of the credit for the spectacle.
Judy, his wife and partner in the show, is the one who does all the work related to the puppets, painting and fixing them - even creating new marionettes for the stories.
As long as Punch doesn't do anything too stupid, Judy puts up with his bad mood and drunken behaviour. A story all too familiar, even in current times.
Eventually, Punch gets drunk and does something terribly stupid and irrational, something he doesn't know how to fix... and, since he's quite intoxicated and not thinking straight, he doubles down on his stupidity.
This is the turning point in the story, as the two go on their separate ways... leaving Judy with a bitter taste on her mouth, as she sees that Punch is going to get away with his actions. So, she gets hellbent and wants to enact her revenge. 😠
The men and women around her try to convince Judy that any act of revenge is pointless, explaining her the whole village is ruled by an irrational crowd and it would be better to move on than to try changing their ways.
She seems to accept it... but when she finds out what Punch did to escape his actions, she gets furious and decides that something must be done! 🤨
- Will Judy be able to take revenge without being attacked herself?
- Or will she forgive/forget Punch and move on with her life?
To get the answers to these questions, you need to watch the movie until the very end.
The movie was filmed in Australia and it's all spoken in English. Despite that, I watched it with English subs because some of the villagers pronunciation was hard for me to get. They were playing drunken old villagers, after all...
The main characters, Judy and Punch, are played by Mia Wasikowska and Damon Herriman, an Australian actress and actor unknown to me. They both deliver a good performance with Mia Wasikowska standing tall in her role, from beginning to end. 🤗
Most of the cast played their parts really well and they made me believe in the story and epoch. There were a few unconvincing characters but they played small parts and the movie didn't suffer from it.
The scenery is very good and it really feels like we have just traveled to the past. All the locations, from the village to the forest, were well portrayed and believable. The wardrobe pieces are perfectly done.
The storytelling is excellent, gluing you to the screen, always eager to know what comes next. There are more than enough funny moments in the film to call this a comedy, even though the main story is quite dramatic and serious.
This is a heck of a good movie, in my opinion, and one that you shouldn't miss. These kind of gems are getting quite rare in today's modern times.
I rate it with a 9 out of 10.
