Review of Herself

"Herself" is an Amazon original movie that follows the story of Sandra, a young mother that escaped from an abusive marriage, enduring a lot of psychological and physical pain. All this while she tries to give her daughters a normal life, by finding a permanent accommodation. The movie treats some interesting topics: trying to be a good role model for your kids, despite living a daily trauma that will never completely disappear. At first it also shows how crazy the housing market is in our era. Unfortunately the movie loses partly its credibility when a doctor, for whom she works as a cleaning lady, decides to give part of her land to Sandra, in order to build her small house, by also lending her the money to do that. Never saw such generosity in my entire life. Because it wants to depict events in a realistic way, I cannot just pass over this writing choice. I was happy to see how the director slowly built up the main character and her daughters, by showing the huge difference between one another when it came to the relationship with their father.

The photography is really simple but very effective for this kind of narration. The cast is good, there are some actors that I have never seen before, but that I have liked very much. I was surprised to see Harriet Walter. I am always happy when such big actors that worked in big blockbusters during their careers, decide to take part in these smaller projects. Did not like the choice to use pop music as soundtrack for the film, it was very anticlimactic. "Herself" is far from being a perfect product, but it is overall a nice motion picture that shows the tragic condition of a woman victim of domestic violence during our times.