Braid (2018) - A Pretty, Muddled Mess

Nobody Leaves, or Braid (2018), tells the story of two friends who seek refuge with a third friend, after a drug heist. The catch is that this friend, Daphne (Madeleine Brewer), still wants to play the same ‘house’ games they did as children, and said games get dangerous quickly.

There are a dozen different theories on what the plot of Nobody Leaves even is. It plays with reality and game, with drug highs and sobriety to the point that, when the credits come, its unclear what even happened. Perhaps that’s the intention, but it doesn’t make for an enjoyable film – in my experience, the effort to be nonsensical means only those who think they’ll seem cleverer by loving it, will like it.

It is as though director Mitzi Peirone had a selection of interesting images surrounding the three girls, and frantically tried to tie together all of the plot ideas together. Girls in nightdresses with masks, or entwined with a huge braid of hair, to name a few. And the imagery really is spectacular. The majority of the film is set in a fast, marble mansion, littered with statues and fountains. In reality, its decaying, which is just another aspect that blurs the lines between what is real, and what is imagined. The colours are also beautiful. Tilda (Sarah Hay)’s bright red hair pops off the screen, as does the sweetshop-esque greens and pinks, once Tilda and Petula (Imogen Waterhouse) are dragged into Daphne’s play world. The other colour to note is yellow. A bright, sickly yellow that weaves itself through costumes and set to link everything together. Yellow is normally associated with happiness, and indeed, the girls are certainly playing happy families, but here it evokes a sickly sweetness, or decay.

The acting should also be mentioned. All three girls walk the line between adult and child remarkably well. They change into what the game needs them to be and back. It's like watching a production of Blood Brothers. Indeed, Nobody Leaves would work better onstage, where the fragmented story and filler psychadelic scenes would be at home.

So, the only fault with Nobody Leaves is really that overwhelming sense of ‘what did I just watch?’ that you are left with at the end. Unfortunately, this is quite an issue, which leads to the dozens of conflicting theories mentioned above. And try as they might, no theory seems to account for everything. If this is all in (!!)’s mind, how do we account for the train scene at the beginning? How can we trust anything we see?

In my opinion, the whole movie is just three girls playing with dolls. Its dark and twisted, but plenty of little girls include murder as a plot in the Barbie sitcoms. It would explain the plot that meanders and then suddenly hit a dramatic moment. It would explain the numerous costume changes, the behind the back gossiping and even the ‘sex’ scene. In this lens, the film follows the vivid imagination of three girls playing with three dolls (hence the differences in gender and age), throwing every ‘adult’ thing they can think of to make the whole thing more exciting. Death doesn’t matter, because the whole thing’s just a game.

Of course, it’s hard to justify a film in which nothing matters. It means there are no consequences and no investment in the plot or characters. In the end, Nobody Leaves is still a little too artsy for general audiences.