Mid lol, too much film ewww

Pin Cushion (2017) is a British dramedy, written and directed by Deborah Haywood. It is the story of a complex mother and daughter relationship. The narrative of making a fresh start is juxtaposed against the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship, the inescapable cruelty of others, and Iona's budding adolescence, naiveté, and search for her identity outside the boundaries of the mother-daughter relationship which create the dramatic tension that moves the narrative. Stellar performances make the film. Joanna Scanlan plays Lyn, Iona's mother, and Lily Newmark plays her teenage daughter Iona. Scanlan delivers a poignant and nuanced performance of a downtrodden, marginalized, sympathetic and relatable character living with a physical disfigurement who is desperately trying to hold on to her teenage daughter who she adores. She brings a gravitas and dignity to her role and the luminosity of her humanity lights the screen. Lyn and Iona are likeable characters that will keep you rooting for them. Their closeness, tenderness and love for each other is deeply moving but under threat by Iona's budding adolescence and desire to separate and individuate. They have nicknames for each other. Iona calls her mother, Dafty One and Lyn calls her daughter, Dafty Two. They both share a love for cats and kittens and wear cat inspired fury clothing and accessories. The motif of cats and kittens runs throughout the narrative. It's a complex relationship. They share a bed, and it isn't until Iona begins to assert herself that she gets her own room. When Iona begins to spread her wings, she tunes out her mom and even publicly denies her which psychologically wounds Lyn. One of the most difficult scenes to watch in the film is seeing Lyn take a saw to her hunchback in the bath. One of the most powerful scenes in the film is when Lyn opens herself up and reveals her backstory at the friendship group at the local community centre. The adage to blame the victim rings out loud and clear. Linda's comments, one of the participants, to Lyn are cruel, "This is a friendship group not a freak show." Another powerful scene is when she demands her step ladder back from her neighbor. One of the sweetest scenes is seeing mother and daughter doing a dance in the living room to a lovely piece of music. One of the funniest scenes is when Iona comes home and finds her mom lapping milk from a dish and making cat sounds. One of the most interesting and bizarre scenes in the film involves Lyn's attendance at a psychic show and the advice the psychic gives Lyn. Some of the most difficult scenes to watch involve Iona spiraling out of control and self-destructing. It's a complex film showing the cruelty of others, and the self-harm we inflict on ourselves. Iona's attempt to fit in with her peer group at her new school takes a devastating toll on her self-esteem, and she doesn't realize that she is putting at risk her close relationship with her mom in trying to fit in. Pin Cushion can be seen as a coming of age film since Iona experiences many firsts such as sexual awakening, and making decisions for herself albeit the wrong ones. A good film is not without its villains and the film has several in the likes of Keeley, Stacie and to a lesser extent Chelsea. Sacha Cordy-Nice plays Keeley, the school bully, and does such a fantastic job of it that her performance leaves you speechless. She is the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing. Saskia Paige Martin plays Stacie and Bethany Antonia plays Chelsea. The cruelty Keeley inflicts on a naive Iona knows no boundaries and fuels the dramatic tension in the film. Keeley is one nasty girl, and Iona is a naïve, sweet girl who desperately wants to fit in, mistaking Keeley's intentions. The cosmic dance the two dance together gets played out in the film to devastating consequences. Pin Cushion shines a light on bullying in the school system, and the myriad forms it takes from psychological and emotional abuse to physical isolation and intimation to cyberbullying. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, once our physiological and safety needs are met, we desire love and belonging including friendship and a sense of connection. The film contextualizes Iona's desire for friendship and belonging outside the confines of the mother-daughter relationship. We can sympathize and relate to her desire, and her acting inappropriately because she feels it is necessary to fit in even if her behavior is detrimental to her well-being. The director has woven together many visual elements to create a powerful film where new beginnings meet misery, disappointment, and tragedy. Close ups and medium angle shots are interspersed with wide angle shots and the film incorporates both day and night and interior and exterior footage. Haywood juxtaposes the real and the fantasied thoughts of Iona to express Iona's unconscious desires and fears which gives the film a complexity and richness. Haywood uses colored lens filters to saturate scenes with color and reference meaning, uses out of focus superimposed dissolving images to create a visual metaphor for sexual organism, frames certain scenes within the context of a hallway mirror to create backstory, and voice-over to express lies. Pin Cushion is a compelling and powerful film that will not only tug at your heartstrings but break your heart. Upon reflection, the film resonated with me on many levels such as the importance of mental health, relationships, redemption and second chances. It shines a light on parental relationships in particular the special bond between a mother and child. Mothers we have or have had but no one has had the same kind of mother and so, our mothers have/hold different meanings for us. Yet, what mothers have in common, I believe, is the love they profess for their children, to protect them from harm, and their desire to be loved in return, and remain an integral part of their children's lives. The film dramatizes a special mother-daughter relationship between an eccentric loving mother living with a physical disfigurement and her sweet yet naive teenage daughter trying to spread her wings and forge a life outside the boundaries of the mother-daughter relationship, and the devastating consequences when the bond is broken. The film is well-made film with superb acting and dialogue, and worth the price of admission. It's just not an excellent film but has tremendous educational value and sheds a light on the devastating effects of school bullying and can serve as a primer for anyone who wants to understand the ugliness of this unacceptable social phenomenon.

Mean people suck. This leads to unrelenting sadness. Well made, well acted, well written, well directed, well shot. Except the abuse just keeps piling up. Neither lead character has any real happiness; they just keep getting hammered with meanness from others. It's hard to watch and the end only offers very mixed relief.

Weird out of the box, but an interesting look into a young girl and her mom's life - trying to find their place and friends. Girls are terrible to each other...but the mom definitely strikes the greatest blow with a really impactful ending.

11/22/2018 The fantasy coming of age should have woven a little bit more magic into this theme that has been told and retold a countless different permutations. I somehow wasn't able to root for the protagonist enough to like this.

Good movie about growing pains, peer pressure. Kinda sad at the end.

The performances of Newmark and Scanlan apart (the appalling shortcomings of the film not being their fault at all), this was absolutely dire. A truly revolting film without any merit at all (oh, the music was quite nicely done). But ... I could waste an awful lot of time analysing it, but I won't bother. It was the very opposite of entertaining (I had to force myself to stick with it and not walk out, in the hopes that it might develop some kind of redeeming dramatic resolution.) Nor was it intellectually stimulating or thought-provoking. Incredibly, it didn't really have a social message either, it was all in a kind of puerile vacuum. I felt I'd gone back 50 years to film school, though I don't think I ever saw a film as bad at this in the three years I was at film school. I can't really think of any film in my whole life that I've enjoyed less. 92 minutes of sewage that I'm now trying to erase from my memory like a very bad dream.

It's a cruel, cruel world for kids. There are a lot of harsh truths that you never see coming, and, depending on your class status and family, they can be drastically more difficult to deal with. That's probably why Lady Bird hit so hard a year ago because intrinsic to its standard coming-of-age plot line was a subtler undercurrent of socio-economic struggle. Where many of these types of films focus almost exclusively on the protagonist's emotional state, Lady Bird and now Deborah Haywood's Pin Cushion have quite a lot to do with the mechanisms that surround the elucidation of adulthood. Starting life fresh in a new town, Lyn (Joanna Scanlan) and her teen daughter Iona (Lily Newmark) are eccentric and in sync with each other, but the insular and catty nature of their new home drives them apart in spite of themselves. Their naive and passive proclivities give them away to the most callous inhabitants of their community, and they fall prey to an almost hyperbolic series of bullyings. This thing gets dark then darker. If I were forced to provide a point of reference for the sense of unsettling dread that permeates this movie I would immediately say Hereditary. Yet somehow Pin Cushion seems more sincere than that critically acclaimed darling of a film because however absolutely bizarre Lyn and Iona act, there isn't some silly satanic cop-out. They really are struggling with not only sanity but the absurdly vindictive society that they isolated themselves from until it was too late for them to be able to deal with it. Much of the film focuses on Iona's experiences as she traverses her school's small social sphere like any film of this particular genre. But when she tries to fit in, she is subjected to passive aggressive agony all the way to outright slanderous hatred. That "small victory" sense of triumph characteristic of other similar set films is rarely seen. Instead we are treated to the darkest humor riddled with gorgeously shot fantasy sequences of how she would wish her life to be, so the highs are high enough that the lows are absolutely devastating. It's equal parts hilarious, depressing, and thoughtful, and it's a film that makes you want to be nicer to people.

That movie was f**k all! Wtf?!?! Little bastards cu*nts burn another human being like that and aren't even arrested?! Then the gutless mother gets a chance to bash their heads in and hangs herself?!??!?!

'Pin Cushion', is an ambitious first feature film written and directed by Deborah Haywood. In the end, it just didn't work for me. It would have made a fantastic short, but stretched and i do mean stretched to 85 minutes the premise ran much too thin. It's about bullying, but the ways it gets there are not authentic and I had trouble believing they could ever happen. Am I to believe everyone in this place has lost their ability to be tethered to reality? Why is mental illness treated so casually? The performances of the mother and daughter, Joanna Scanlan and Lily Newmark were singularly fantastic, however, I didn't think they had chemistry when on screen together. Haywood has something to say and it's important but it gets muddled in all of the fantasy role play she inserts into the film as filler. There's a tangent to the plot that could have been done so much better. We get it the mother is getting bullied also. Stop beating us over the head and show some context. There's something about this film that sticks with you but it's more like gum to the batting of your shoe. I do look forward to future works by Haywood, perhaps ones that are a bit more developed. Final Score: 5.2/10

Deep with a strong message, Pin Cushion talks about school harrassement, hits our minds very easily... Not everyone knows what's happening, so after watching when you talk about it, you learn new things about the move !