Lucy's Tale

We first meet Lucy (Irina Bravo) when she's trying on a bra. Without asking, the assistant steps out of the cubicle and shouts across the shop floor, requesting one with extra padding. It's the kind of humiliation Lucy is used to - she gets similar treatment from her mother. Adults often fail to consider the embarrassment they cause to children, or to notice when they're not really children anymore.

Lucy's mother fails to notice a lot of things.

The changes in Lucy's body have come on slowly. We see her growing more and more self-conscious about them. This, of course, shows in her general behaviour. It makes her attractive to shy local boy Brad (Zach Fifer), who nervously asks her out - but how will he respond when he knows her secret? It makes her a tempting target for the bullies in her school, a group of girls who casually assault her and try to make sure she feels unwelcome anywhere they might be.

Lucy's physical difference is one that can be found in real life, though it's very rare, and writer/director Chelsea Lupkin gives it fantastical qualities. Deeply ashamed as she is, it seems she hasn't looked for others like herself, instead becoming more and more isolated. Her awkwardness is compounded by another oddity. Why is it that the girls who bully her have a tendency to get nosebleeds? Is she the one causing this? And can she control it?

Though set in the US, Lupkin's film makes allusions to Northern European folklore with its stories of changelings, hulderfolk and an ancient history of interbreeding leading to strange genetic legacies. In other ways, it's thoroughly modern, and teenagers with numerous other types of difference will find it easy to relate to. The trouble is that although it's very effective in building up a portrait of its troubled heroine, it doesn't really do anything with that. The story is very slight and hinges on a sense of shock that many viewers simply won't feel. Its most powerful emotional impact comes partway through, when Lucy considers mutilating herself. Next to that, the visual impact of bodily difference feels a bit lame.