Saulė Bliuvaitė’s debut “Toxic” is a bristling, emotionally naked portrait of adolescence. It ponders the costs of throwing oneself over into the pit of risk and uncertainty in the search for elevation, be it exerting damagingly for career upstarts or skewed notions of beauty. Potent strains of alienation and discord reverberate throughout the film.
Both the girls at the center, Maria (Vesta Matulyte) and Kristina (Ieva Rupeikaite), veer close to being rudderless. Denuded of the love and support they think they deserve, the two inadvertently swivel to a self-destructive course in the pursuit of finding something that is able to reflect back on them a sense of importance and self-affirmation. Neither of the two are present in the girls. Their crippling low self-esteem pushes them to dangerous extremes, whose repercussions they are almost entirely naïve to. The price reveals itself on the body and mind with corrosive devastation.
The modeling school is primed in the narrative as the axis that lures them to imagine a future where their bodies would be prized and embraced and they wholly understood in all their undesirable edges. Bliuvaitė’s screenplay doesn’t divulge much detail about this grooming agency, but its methods and air instantly give off distancing energy. However, to the duo, as with so many girls who enroll at the school, it glimmers with promise. Maria is unsure initially. But it is promptly harped on her that her confidence is the crucial thing. If she can carry herself with elan, her limp will cease to poke out. The pair find themselves hopelessly drawn to the agency, especially since it promises a significant casting event in the region.
Everyone’s eyes naturally lock on that target. However, there are too many bumps in the road in between. Though the girls are assured it’s their own self-image that matters more than what they perceive as their bodily limitation, they are quickly provoked into a series of measures that indicate the stark obverse. In swift, insidious ways, the girls are compelled to wrangle out sources of income to afford the agency’s various demands.
Neither can approach their parents or guardians about their desires, fearing an immediate lashing out. Kristina’s father would rather have her stowed out of the house so that he can pursue his sexual peccadilloes with his new partner. Maria also isn’t in a wholly comfortable relationship with her grandmother, craving to return to her mother’s side.
Therefore, both become casual drifters. While Kristina doesn’t flinch at hookups that’ll fetch her quick cash, which she can funnel into the modeling stint, Maria is more wary. She is unwilling, but as the two get more intimate, she considers plunging into acts she’d never dared to. It’s a kind of desperation from which the two operate, believing their oft-heedless, brash actions would ultimately pay off and that it’d all be worth it.
Is the destination vaunted to the girls for their strenuous efforts even genuine? A later incensed conversation in the film, in which two parents accost the center’s head, which Maria overhears, only serves to drive further our nagging suspicion that the center might be crushingly unreliable. One would be smarter than to repose unstinting faith in it to bolster their dreams. It’s a merciless industry that threatens to suck out one’s spirit and soul entirely if they aren’t careful to see through the impositions that are dangled as a necessary compromise.
But the film steadily abstains from casting the slightest flying bit of judgment on the duo. It recognizes with nuance and grit the agony of two teenagers who simply wish to be noticed. Just a bit of loving attention would deflect both from hurtling into reckless directions. As Simone Weil once wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Teenage is a prickly junction in life, with one beset by a whole gamut of issues regarding their bodies that demand acknowledgment and resolution.
However, the path to addressing them is thorny, icky, and discombobulating. One tends to make an array of mistakes while hunting for ways that might help them confront the projection of themselves in the most honest, unaffected manner. But how prepared are they to admit to themselves essential facets of identity? It is particularly the age when one would rather flee and take shelter in falsehoods and things that seem to assuage oneself, which instead couldn’t be more hurtful and isolating.
“Toxic has a setting that is visually redolent of decay and hopelessness. Life seems to have dried up in the way DP Vytautas Katkus shoots the town. Everyone is just trying to hold on to some sort of bearing. It exacerbates the desire of the girls to break out of what looks purgatorial to them and shift away somewhere shinier and more favorable. The grimy, self-assured drama would have none of its bracing power that ripples to the surface explosively, especially in scenes of subdued aftermath if it didn’t have such actresses who aren’t afraid to be scabrous and needy in the same breath.
