The early minutes of Frida Kempff’s Knocking show its main character watching Ingmar Bergman’s Persona in the day room of a mental health facility. If this scene doesn’t set the tone for a film, I don’t know what will. Using a cinematic reference point in this way is a risky move, but Kempff pulls it off by successfully tapping into the same mania and paranoia that filmmakers like Bergman and Roman Polanski did over a half-century ago. Today, with discussions about gaslighting and mental health now part of the common lexicon, Knocking seems as well-timed as it does disturbingly relevant.
Knocking may not be a wholly innovative story, or even one told in a particularly innovative way, but its timeliness gives it an urgency that’s hard to manufacture out of thin air. The stigma attached to trauma and grief hangs heavy over the film, as those around Molly (played wonderfully by Cecilia Milocco) continuously disregard her pleas for help. “She’s crazy,” they all say, or “Go back to the nuthouse,” as if her former tragedies disqualify her from assistance or the benefit of the doubt. The treatment she receives from her neighbors is infuriating, but is it so far-fetched?
Where the film shines, though, is not necessarily in how it’s made or acted (both superb, by the way), but in the realization that each of us is invited to bring our own baggage into our interpretation of what’s happening to the beleaguered Molly. I can think of a dozen ways to explain the ending (maybe you can too), with each just as correct — or completely wrong — as the next. These kinds of films that allow us to imprint our own experiences onto them are a special kind of rarity.
Originally published by ASHEVILLE MOVIES.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.