The Divide

The Divide is a very well made movie. I did not enjoy watching it. I watch movies for escapism. The Divide provides exactly zero escapism. It is a cold, bitter dose of reality on screen.

The film begins on an already bleak note. Long-time couple Raf and Julie are splitting up. As Raf tries to fight for their relationship, Julie’s son mentions he is going to an anti-government protest. While chasing down Julie on the street, Raf falls and breaks her arm. She gets sent to an already overtaxed hospital. In addition to Raf, the hospital waiting room is full of protesters who clashed with the police. The already overworked hospital staff have not only patients to deal with but moral issues regarding releasing protester names to the police. As time drags on, the situation gets even worse. The protests descend into riots that come right to the hospital’s front door.

The Divide is by far the most eventful WLW film by Catherine Corsini. Her first entry, Replay was a disappointingly understated tale of mutually obsessive friendship. Following Replay was Summertime , a sun-dappled cottagecore romance. There was a whiff of politics, but Summertime was largely a languid fantasy. Conversely, The Divide starts quickly and never stops. Frenetic music cues bring the already tense atmosphere up further. This is edge of your seat viewing. At any moment, everything could go wrong. And more than once, it does.

The Divide is borderline a horror film. The amount of tension and despair in this film runs rampant. The film shows humanity at its absolute worst. Breakups, political disagreements and a hospital waiting room brings out the best in nobody. There’s a nihilistic, hopeless feel to The Divide. It shows a society on the brink of collapse. And the absolute worst thing about it is that it doesn’t feel made up. Everything in The Divide feels extraordinarily real. Issues regarding increasing ideological volatility and especially understaffed hospitals aren’t fiction. They’re happening right now in real life. The Divide offers you no escape from them. Instead, it puts you right at the centre of the tension present in a society verging on disaster.

While Raf and partner Julie are the centre of the film, The Divide has a great ensemble cast. Other notable characters include overworked nurse, Kim and desperate protester, Yann. The Divide offers all of them a chance to share their struggles and points of view onscreen. Corsini manages to give them this while still making them feel like full characters. Each character has a life outside of this hospital. Regardless of political stance, Corsini offers each character humanity. The Divide doesn’t take a strong “side” on the politics beyond hospitals deserve more funding and police should be less violent. What it offers instead is a portrait of various people caught in the centre. Each of them has severe flaws but all of them also genuinely want a better future.

The Divide’s best feature is how extraordinarily real it feels. It is anxiety about the state of society put onscreen. Because of the state society is in, that makes it a bleak and difficult to watch film. But my god was it well done. I didn’t think Corsini had it in her to make something this tense and urgent. The Divide is a huge step forward for her as a filmmaker. I did not enjoy watching the film at all, but that’s because it achieved what it set out to do so well.

Overall rating: 8.1/10

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