Reviews

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  ★★★★½ review by Ay Vn on Letterboxd

  I love the realistic filming and acting here. All the shots were incredibly photographic.

  The dynamic of Sarah's relationship with her father and friendships give the movie it's ability to work its way into susceptible people's soft spot.

  It was a very clear movie, with actors who can genuinely show you their disinterest in protecting life, and because of this- some physically rough scenes are in it.

  I can't really say anything bad about it.

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  ★★★½ review by Mark Cunliffe on Letterboxd

  From 2007 to 2012 there were some 79 recorded instances of suicide among young people in Bridgend, South Wales. The similarities between each tragic case were striking - the teenagers had hung themselves, they knew one another, they went to the same school, they visited the same social networking sites and online chat rooms - but their reasons confounded the authorities, the community and the wider world. I well remember these curious, tragic cases and know that no answer has ever been given.

  It takes a brave or frankly crass director to tackle a dramatic interpretation of these events and thankfully, Danish documentary filmmaker Jeppe Rønde is wise and sensitive enough to know that offering audiences his own imagined answer for this spate of suicides just wouldn't work. To do so, really would have been crass and presumptive. As such, anyone expecting to find a coherent narrative and answers in Bridgend will be far from happy, but frankly such criticisms aren't valid in my point of view. To come to this film expecting a reason for what happened, for it all to be tied up in a bow, is just stupid.

  That's not to say that Rønde doesn't make some elliptical, vague suggestions though and I'm sure many of them have already crossed the minds of anyone who, like me, has been fascinated by this case - does rural isolation and alienation play a part, or is it simply the lack of opportunity to be found in such small, disenfranchised and rather hermetic former mining communities? Is there something strange and secretive going on via the online community, or is it just a way for the victims to hit back at their parents who simply cannot comprehend their lives and have failed them all in some way?

  The one criticism I can appreciate however is that this is 'too soon'. There are people still suffering, still grieving and still mourning these inexplicable deaths that, to fictionalise them, is bound to prove offensive for some. It's surprising that Rønde, a documentary filmmaker, didn't make a documentary about this strange saga really as I am sure that a) there would be a market for that, and b) it would be more palatable for those left behind.

  As a narrative piece Rønde draws on not only the Nordic Noir of his Scandinavian roots, but also the rich seam of similarly themed Welsh Noir that started with the Philip Madoc series A Mind To Kill back in the 1990s and continues to this day with bleak and compelling Hinterland. As such what we get is a hauntingly shot movie that makes great use of natural light to capture the leaden, drizzly skies of the economically neglected, raw and rugged Welsh valleys. The atmosphere is bleak and portentous - sometimes verging on the folk horror territory in fact - and it wouldn't be incorrect to say that Rønde's film explores the baffling, mass hysterical nature of what occurred in Bridgend in a similar manner to Carol Morley's The Falling, Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock and Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides. Despite these likely inspirations and the inherent eerie strangeness, Rønde still manages to ground his film with a very real sense of what that kind of an isolated and isolating town may represent or feel like for someone approaching adulthood, with all the mixed up feelings that stage in life can inspire, and captures a fine and sympathetic performance from his leading lady Hannah Murray.

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  ★★★½ review by Jeremy on Letterboxd

  Mainstream audiences will complain Bridgend doesn't give any answers or have any resolution. They will feel cheated out of an ending. Audiences should feel cheated out of an ending when the film's theme is teenage suicide. This is based on a true story, an unsolved mystery, so wouldn't it be cheating if the film gave it's audience resolution?

  Bridgend is dark, foreboding and depressing. Just as it should be. It's also properly ambiguous, staying true to the source material. The music is ominous, as if it's detuned and playing through blown speakers. Bridgend is haunting.

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  ★★★½ review by Brandon Hart on Letterboxd

  Thought this was very good; it certainly made me feel stuff. Not much new in the way of teen indie dramas, but it's got its head angled toward the communal digestion of angst & the fact that this is based on real events feels less like exploitation & more like an attempt to explain the unexplainable? Like Foxcatcher, in a way. Gorgeous visuals too.

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  ★★★★★ review by J.P. Vitale on Letterboxd

  A gorgeously shot movie (very similar in color palate to the also gorgeously shot "Sweet Home") that is nothing short of a masterpiece, this moody film stars "Game of Thrones" and "Skins" star Hannah Murray as Sara, a teenage schoolgirl who moves with her widowed father to Bridgend, a small town in Wales where many teenagers have committed suicide in the 5-year span of 2007 to 2012 (which is true, there have been multiple documentaries on this subject). There she becomes entangled in the lives of a group of troubled, death-obsessed kids.

  Hauntingly beautiful and very similar in subject matter to "The Virgin Suicides" but darker and mostly bleaker (yet shockingly hopeful) in execution, "Bridgend" is a tour-de-force in acting (Murray is striking) and directing as well as the aforementioned GORGEOUS cinematography.

  A beautiful, downright jawdropping and awe-inspiring film.

  One of my favorite movies of 2016 as of May 10th.

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