The Novice Review

The quest for perfection is an elusive one and it serves as the subject of the indie drama The Novice.

Alex Dall (Isabelle Fuhrman) is a college freshman who joins the university rowing team as a novice. Her goal is to master the sport and join the varsity team. However, her goal becomes a single-minded obsession.

The Novice was a film that did well on the indie circuit. It was nominated for six awards at the Independent Spirit Awards and won three prizes at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. It was easy to see why: it had a tried and tested story, the director brought arty flourishes, and had LGBT themes. Lauren Hadaway made her feature debut as a writer and director, and she shows some promise.

The Novice felt similar to Black Swan and Whiplash. All these films focus on characters who were perfecting a skill and aiming to get a role and all of them show the dark path it forced them down. Black Swan was about a meek ballerina who got the role of the Black Swan in Swan Lake but loses her grasp of reality in the process and Whiplash showed how a talented drummer was getting bullied by his teacher so he could become better. However, The Novice had one major difference: Dall’s issues were self-inflicted.

Dall was portrayed as a determined and vindictive young woman. Her actions were motivated by wanting a challenge. If someone’s better than Dall or tells her she can’t do something she would out of her way to prove them wrong. Dall’s single-mindedness made her a detached figure who used the people around her, which made her an unsympathetic character because she was selfish.

Fuhrman is an actress who has been around for a long time. She’s probably best known for her role in the horror film Orphan, back when she was 10. She was also known for playing Clove in the first Hunger Games movie. Fuhrman has earned a lot of praise for her role and it was deserved as a single-minded young woman who could only focus on rowing. She was always writing notes and looking to improve herself. Dall was disliked by many of the people around her and the few people who were nice to Dall she just used them or dismissed what they were saying.

An example of this was Dall’s twisted scene of friendship she had with Jamie Brill (Amy Forsyth), another girl who joined the novice rowing team. Brill was a student-athlete in high school and needed to make the varsity team so she could get a scholarship. Brill had every reason to be as determined and focused as Dall and she had natural ability, but Brill was shown to be friendly to Dall, unaware of Dall’s competitive streak and viewing Brill as a rival.

Dall was shown to have some softer moments. This was done through Dall’s relationship with Dani (Dilone), a teaching assistant in her physics class. They formed a relationship and they had some warm moments like when they attended a gig and when they were playing pool Dall revealed what drove her to be so competitive. Even with Dall’s unlikeable traits, audiences can relate with her on some level, like getting frustrated when things go wrong and we have all wanted to or tried to master something, no matter how hard it can be.

Before becoming a writer/director, Hadaway worked as a sound editor on major films. Her experience was evident because there was a great emphasis on sound effects and music. The film was filled with a high sound to highlight a character’s mental stress or intensity. Hadaway did like symbolism because there were many times when a spotlight shone on Dall, highlighting her focus, and the image of a crab appeared whenever something goes wrong.

Hadaway’s direction had a cold sense of detachment. This did reflect Dall’s mindset because her focus made her distant from everyone around her. But this cold detachment does make The Novice a hard film to get emotionally invested in.

On a technical level The Novice was a strong debut for its director and the cast gave excellent performances, but its distant approach to the characters made The Novice a film to be appreciated instead of enjoyed.