Wonderwell (2023)

"Set between modern-day Italy and the fantastical realm just beyond, ‘Wonderwell’ is a coming-of-age fairy-tale that follows Violet (Kiera Milward), a naive and inquisitive 12-year-old girl, on a thrilling adventure with Hazel (Fisher) and Yana (Ora) that will transform her life forever.

‘Wonderwell’ was filmed in Rome and Italy during the winter months. It is produced by Fred Roos (The Beguiled, The Godfather: Part II), Alexander Roos (Music, War and Love), Vlad Marsavin, Orian Williams (Control), Lee Rudnicki (Snowchild) and Robert Bernacchi (Snowpiercer). Kenji Katori (Spectre, I Hate Love) served as the film’s cinematographer."


Wonderwell follows in the tradition of Alice in Wonderland, In the Company of Wolves, Labyrinth, Pan's Labyrinth, and Mirror Mask. Yet it jumps right over any subtleties and barges right into behaving like an inebriated bull in a china shop when it comes to metaphors involving young girls, coming of age, puberty, and sexuality. Who was this film for? How did they get Carrie Fisher roped into this? Why is this the last film she ever did and why is that such a shame.

The music composition is splendrous but one expects no less from Angelo Badalamenti who has composed music for two of David Lynch's films; Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks. The score was without a doubt the very best aspect of Wonderwell.

The cinematography was also extraordinary.

The cast seems to have done their best with what they had to work with.

Maybe Wonderwell would have been better if it instead focused on an 18 year old coming of age in the adult world (as the story so clearly yearns for), maybe this film would be good if it didn't hyperfocus on the "flower" of puberty, guzzling the venom of purity culture and at the center of it all A Twelve-Year-Old "losing her flower".

I ask again who was this movie for?

Due to a few one liners Wonderwell seems to be an attempted feminist piece but it fumbles throughout. It follows the American Beauty format of displaying young girls scantily clad (in this film it targets the modeling industry) & then judges them harshly for it. An antiquated approach for a film in 2023. Wonderwell seems like a film that caters to middle-aged men who view young girls as sexual objects yet demand their innocence to be prevalent. If I had a time machine I would go back & skip over this film to better preserve Carrie Fisher's memory.

How did they even get her to recite some of those lines? Was it blackmail?

To say that I hated this film is an understatement, even to say that I loathed it doesn't feel like quite enough of a descriptor for how dismal of an experience this viewing provided.

Maybe we as a society have moved on from the need of men telling coming of age stories about little girls.