An unnerving Lily James portrays the exploitative leader of an all-female cult in a well-paced, gripping psychological thriller, the womanly themes of which ring urgently true.
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Courtesy of Bleecker Street “You carry a lot of weight around, don’t you?” In Guy Nattiv’s observant, harrowing and unmistakably feminine “The Liberation,” this line marks the first time someone truly sees through fortysomething protagonist Rita Cooper. Based on Nattiv’s own grandmother (alongside various cult survivors) and played by Carrie Coon with extraordinary emotional presence and pent-up energy privately looking for an outlet, Rita is an early-1980s woman leading an ordinary life in New Jersey. Quietly depressed, a wife to Reuben (Tracy Letts, Coon’s real-life partner) and mother to Ella (Bella Ramsey) and Jo (Odessa Young), Rita holds a monotonous desk job at a bank by day, and tends to her family by night as part of her humdrum routine. Elsewhere, she agrees to be a part of a video project as a Holocaust survivor, an identity that has defined her past and continues to seep into her present in private, guilt-ridden ways.
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