{"id":22436,"date":"2016-09-22T17:03:19","date_gmt":"2016-09-22T21:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=22436"},"modified":"2016-09-22T17:03:49","modified_gmt":"2016-09-22T21:03:49","slug":"alena-2015-horrible-imaginings-film-festival-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/22\/alena-2015-horrible-imaginings-film-festival-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Alena (2015) [Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2016]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"alena\"<\/a>After a traumatic event, Alena is forced to change school and ends up under the watch of a therapist at an all-girl private school.\u00a0 Here she attempts to make friends, love, and move on with her life as her past clings to her.\u00a0 As she tries to live her life and be happy, ghosts of her past haunt her. The film is based on a graphic novel by Kim W. Andersson and is adapted for the screen by Kerstin Gezelius, Alexander Onofri, and Daniel di Grado with di Grado directing. \u00a0The characters are strong, well developed people, mainly female given the all-girl school setting, and varied.<\/p>\n

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The story falls under the LGBTQ tree but doesn\u2019t use this fact to build interest or curiosity.\u00a0 Alena and a few other characters simply are lesbians, bi, or questioning.\u00a0 It\u2019s not clearly defined for all of them and this may be the best way to handle this.\u00a0 The girls\u2019 sexual orientation just is, like the fact that one\u2019s hair is black or their eyes are blue.\u00a0 Of course, some issues arise from this fact given teenage girl can be ruthless bullies.\u00a0 However, in general, the subject is approached as it is, just another characteristic for some of the characters.\u00a0 The lead character of Alena, her friend Fabienne, and Filippa are well written, well developed characters.\u00a0 The character of Josefin is kept a bit more mysterious, which works very well here.\u00a0 This shows strong writing and good direction as the whole film comes together very well creating a drama that is interesting and makes the viewer want to watch it unfold.<\/p>\n

The titular character of Alena is played by Amalia Holm who brings emotions and talent to her part, showing the complexities of the character and the layers of the story as she peels back parts of the mystery and her character\u2019s life one by one.\u00a0 Playing the despicable Filippa, the bully rich girl used to always getting her way, Molly Nutley is delightfully evil, making the audience hater her character while maybe feeling bad for her a little.\u00a0 Her performance is unrelenting in how mean-spirited her character is.\u00a0 Playing the one accepting, nice person who takes Alena in right away is Felice Jankell as Fabienne.\u00a0 She shows sweetness and care without falling in the realm of saccharine exaggeration.\u00a0 She gets one very powerful scene in particular which she nails.\u00a0 Lastly, Rebecka Nyman plays Josefin with heapfuls of mystery, bringing violence and determination to how she plays the part.<\/p>\n

She is tough but also had something else going on behind her sad eyes.\u00a0 Her character creates doubt and some tension, making the viewer question what is going at times.\u00a0 This cast brings a strong ensemble performance. Adding to this film that is definitely a drama with horror elements, especially in the second half with effects that are minimal, but they work.\u00a0 The music by Karl Frid and Par Frid adds atmosphere and mood to scenes that already worked, thus enhancing them.\u00a0 Their music is non-intrusive and like a supporting character.\u00a0 The cinematography by Simon Olsson shows the natural beauty of Sweden and the grounds the private school is located on.\u00a0 His work uses the same locations for peaceful and then for suspenseful scenes, framing them differently to create different effect.<\/p>\n

Alena is a horror drama that shows some of the horrors of teenage life through one girl slowly coming to terms with the past, learning to let go and move on, dealing with her inner demons while coming of age.\u00a0 The way this is handled is engrossing and never patronizing, something many coming of age films about teenage girls often fall into.\u00a0 The cast chosen handles the fun and the emotional scenes with talent, showing that most of this could be the life of just about any teenage girl trying to learn to live again after a traumatic event.\u00a0 Alena is not your run of the mills coming of age drama, it\u2019s intelligent, scary in spots, and well-crafted while handling the LGBT character with class and in a non-exploitative way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a traumatic event, Alena is forced to change school and ends up under the watch of a therapist at an all-girl private school.\u00a0 Here she attempts to make friends, love, and move on with her life as her past clings to her.\u00a0 As she tries to live her life and be happy, ghosts of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[50,64,302,367,477,1087],"class_list":["post-22436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-a","tag-adaptation","tag-drama","tag-foreign","tag-horror","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22438,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22436\/revisions\/22438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}