Rhoda is screening at the BFI London Film Festival on October 9 and 14.
Written and directed by Alex Lawther, Rhoda is a fascinating and revealing story about the walls we build throughout our lives. Those walls can keep us safe, keep others out, segregate us, and sometimes entrap us, but they also offer security and peace from the outside world. Rhoda (Juliet Stevenson) has spent her adult life alone, her three-story townhouse sitting silently on a plot of land, its brothers and sisters long since demolished in the name of progress. It’s a sturdy house with thick walls, which suits Rhoda, as the outside is full of fear and unknowns. Yet, despite the security of the brick-and-mortar and a daily routine that hasn’t changed in decades, Rhoda wants and needs something new.
Rhoda bravely decides to take on a lodger, Louis (Emma D’Arcy). Louis is young and outgoing, yet quiet, and Rhoda isn’t sure how to communicate with her, leaving endless post-it notes around the house with instructions rather than engaging in conversation. But as time progresses, Louis feels more and more like an uninvited alien to Rhoda, and the walls no longer thick enough to hide her noises and movements, leading Rhoda to confront her with unexpected consequences.
Speaking about Rhoda, Alex Lawther said, “It often feels like we are living in a time of immense fragmentation. Rhoda is my response to a contemporary contradiction – needing interaction, being terrified of it – and something older; essentially being alone and how to let someone in despite that.” Alex Lawther beautifully creates a claustrophobic environment, where the walls Rhoda has carefully built slowly close in as Louis settles in. Stevenson’s Rhoda is desperate for connection yet unable to break free from the rules that surround daily life. Juliet Stevenson said, “Rhoda is a bit like one of those beautiful miniatures in Chinese art where a few brushstrokes create a whole world. Nothing much happens, but everything happens. I have always been very drawn to explorations of loneliness and extreme isolation. That is the primary colour in Rhoda’s world, I would say.” Emma D’Arcy added, “I think Alex has managed to capture something I haven’t really seen dramatised before – namely, the great peril involved in inviting another person to share your private space. I think there’s something very precious in this story about human plasticity. Even when we feel ourselves to be at our most brittle, we are, in fact, able to change, discovering greater tolerance and greater freedom. I think this is a film about freedom.”
At its heart, Lawther’s Rhoda is about the challenge of embracing individual and social change, as well as the fear of letting someone new into our lives and our protected spaces. In a world where we have never been more connected, we are also becoming increasingly lonely and fearful of one another. Lawther, Stevenson, and D’Arcy capture this truth in exquisite detail as the walls Rhoda has built slowly crumble, and the fear of interaction and conversation begins to seep into the gaps. There’s a bit of Rhoda in us all, an innate fear of letting down our guard and allowing people in. That may be why so many now turn to the vacuum of social media rather than braving the fears, social complexities and opportunities of physical spaces where human interaction is essential in building new worlds.
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