Irish period drama The Wonder starring Florence Pugh is set to be released on Netflix in Ireland on December 7th, and on Netflix in the US on December 16th.
Pugh is an actress with a heavily decorated CV to date, starring in Ari Aster’s Midsommar, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women and the 2021 blockbuster Black Widow, to name a few.
Based on Irish author Emma Donoghue’s novel The Pull of the Stars, The Wonder is set in 1862, 13 years after the ending of the Great Famine.
Element Pictures has combined with Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland to produce the film.
The film was shot in various locations across the country, with the reinvigoration of rural Ireland sure to be a big draw for viewers.
The Wonder is directed by Sebastián Lelio, one of the leading figures in post-dictatorship Chilean cinema in the 1990s. Lelio also directed A Fantastic Woman, which follows a transgender woman as the death of her older boyfriend throws her life upside down.
The film explores the 19th-century phenomenon of ‘fasting girls’ – women who were said to have been capable of surviving for long periods of time without eating any food. These women were believed to have special fantastical powers. Saint Catherine of Siena, one of the most influential Italian writers on the Catholic Church, was said to have had some of these mystical fasting properties.
Pugh plays the film’s protagonist Lib, a nightingale of English descent, who journeys deep into the Irish midlands to monitor an 11-year-old girl who is exhibiting the characteristics of a ‘fasting girl’, reported to have survived without any food for months.
What ensues is a psychological thriller where good battles evil, as nefarious forces come to play and the young girl’s health declines rapidly, forcing Lib to seek out the truth and get to the root cause of her woes.
The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado in September. Despite the film’s potential, audiences at the festival were left “muted” according to the Los Angeles Times, with Deadline arguing that it feels like a “mildly curious situation that’s been milked for more than it’s worth”. Irrespective of the mixed reviews, Florence Pugh was still lauded for her stellar performance.
