The Wonder

In 1862, just after the Great Famine, an English nurse named Lib is sent to an Irish village. Her job is to watch eleven-year-old Anna, who claims to have eaten nothing for months and is still alive, and whom the village regards as a miracle. It is adapted from Emma Donoghue's 2016 novel, with a screenplay by Donoghue, director Sebastián Lelio and Alice Birch. Its boldest decision is the frame. The opening moves through a film studio while a narrator tells the audience this is a story and that they must believe in it. The same gesture returns at the end. So a film about belief puts its own fictionality on the table. Florence Pugh plays Lib Wright, a veteran of the Crimean War, and that performance is what critics agree on. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus points straight at her remarkable work. It premiered at Telluride in September 2022 and reached Netflix in November after a limited release. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 85 percent. Critics praised the direction, performances, cinematography and score, with one calling it a sumptuous but slightly undercooked tale. The rural setting, religious foreboding and general dread drew comparisons to folk horror. Who it is for: viewers who like slow, cold period films thinking about belief. Who it is not for: anyone who will find the framing device gratuitous. The film opens that gesture and does not carry it through.