Parents' Guide to Sew Torn

This whimsical, off-kilter crime thriller is full of dark humor and thoughtful reflections on fate and free will. Sew Torn is the debut feature from writer-director Freddy Macdonald, and originally started as a short film concept. Here, it retains its quirky vision, but extends it into a three-chapter structure—Perfect Crime, Call Police, Drive Away—reminiscent of the "do-over" style of movies like Run Lola Run. At the center, young mobile seamstress Barbara seems unassuming, but is faced with a choice when she comes across a drug deal gone bad. Viewers see the outcome of each in turn, as Barbara uses her unique skill with thread to carry out ingenious — but often subtly violent — plans. Set in a Swiss village, the visuals have an almost Wes Anderson style, with playful shots and angles, and bizarre moments. The thread itself is a strong visual theme, almost booby trapping Barbara's home where it connects sewn images of her childhood to audio recordings of her mother, keeping her physically tangled up in her past. It's later used to create elaborate structures for her to commit crimes from a distance, viewers watching the puzzles being formed in front of their eyes and waiting eagerly for the pay-off. However, that distance also makes it hard to entirely root for her as a character. As Barbara, Connolly hardly has any dialogue, and while she's entertaining to watch, we're not given much of a sense of the motives behind her actions, which makes it difficult to invest emotionally in the story. That said, this is a unique debut with a strong sense of style that marks Macdonald as an interesting one to watch.