Summary
An adaptation of the 2018 book club favourite follows the best and worst romantic drama traditions, but is often adrift in the marshes.
The story behind WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING is even more fascinating than the book itself. As of 2022, author Delia Owens and her husband Mark Owens are still wanted for questioning in relation to the killing of a poacher in Zambia. The story keeps resurfacing thanks to the thematic similarities with her debut novel, even more so that First Match director Olivia Newman has turned it into a film.
The book itself is written for a very particular audience. Following the death of rich kid Chase (Harris Dickinson), social outcast Catherine “Kya” Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is accused of his murder. Having raised herself in the North Carolina wetlands, she is known to the locals as the ‘Marsh Girl.’
When kindly lawyer Tom Milton (David Strathairn) takes on the case, her past is unfurled via a series of flashbacks. Torn between her love of Chase, the Carolina marshes and the academic Tate (Taylor John Smith), the events leading up to the fateful death are revealed. What isn’t revealed is why the two loves of her life look almost identical. Indeed, if you aren’t paying attention you might just think it’s the one guy having an identity crisis.
Like the book, the film works best when there’s a central mystery told in a non-linear fashion, with some naturalist observations along the way. At the urging of Tate, she begins to develop a series of art books based on her marshland sketches. As they earn wider acclaim across the country, Kya is still unable to bring herself to leave her moist home.
Some may enjoy the back half, where it becomes more of a courtroom thriller, although it started to lose this viewer a bit there. As the film awkwardly cuts back to the trial between liaisons, key bits of evidence are overlooked for the sake of more lingering shots of Kya on the waterfront. Yet really, if you were cool with a pseudo-magical forest, and a pair of Black characters only written to advance the story of the young lead (something the original book was equally criticised for), narrative nuance isn’t going to worry you much.
The two samey male leads notwithstanding, it’s the cast that makes this mostly watchable in the end. Daisy Edgar-Jones brings a convincing lead performance as Kya. In a complete contrast with her character in Mimi Cave’s Fresh, Edgar-Jones lifts the character off the page and makes her tangible.
More Nicholas Sparks than Karen Blixen, WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING never breaks free of the flaws in the source material. Adhering to the book’s structure, complete with a constant voice-over, it will only really appeal to lovers of romances where the stakes are low and the landscape shots are bountiful. Even if there’s nary a crawdad to be seen anywhere.
2022 | USA | DIRECTOR: Olivia Newman | WRITERS: Lucy Alibar (based on a story by Delia Owens) | CAST: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson, Michael Hyatt, Sterling Macer Jr., David Strathairn | DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Releasing | RUNNING TIME: 126 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 21 July 2022 (AUS)
