Girl Behaving Badly

Rating: 7/10 (27 April 2010)

Just a couple of weeks before I saw this film an American couple was in the news because they sent their adopted child back to Russia on a plane citing, in a note, psychological problems with the kid. That kid probably had nothing on the adopted child in this film. "Orphans" trades on the fear that, when you adopt a child from a former Soviet Bloc country you really don't know what you're getting. Unfair, yes, but a juicy premise for a thriller.
Vera Farmiga effectively portrays the gradual, growing hysteria of her character, Kate, who has lost her third child in a miscarriage and decides to do a very fine and noble thing - give the love she would have given to her baby to an adopted child instead. Imagine her hurt and anger as she gradually discovers that this charmingly eccentric kid, Esther, has completely and savagely betrayed her. Esther is remarkably intelligent and intuitive, and "freaky" in more ways than one. She knows how to disrupt the family, manipulating Kate's husband, John, and using fear tactics to keep Kate's two birth children under her thumb. The household becomes an arena of suspicion, fear and dread. It's the old "fox in the chicken coop" story.
The twist, believe me, is a zinger! If you're anything like me and get so caught up in the story that you dismiss the clues you won't see it coming. The twist not only ramps up the creepiness and danger, but also creates an alarming new dimension which the film-makers could have explored with more zeal and created a more gratifying movie monster - but didn't. Essentially, we've seen this movie before, the stepfather / nanny / roommate, etc. from hell, with a paint-by-numbers plot and a big go-for-broke fight at the end. For what it is it's okay, but it plays it safe and doesn't take us to those dark places where a film-maker like, say, Neil Jordan would have (see "In Dreams").