The Lost Girls never lands on a good way to revisit Peter Pan
Even a fun performance by Vanessa Redgrave can't save this confusing update
Film Reviews Peter Pan
Most individuals in the writing and creative fields generally believe that public domain is a good thing. It prevents eternal profiteering, allows for the occasional brilliant reinterpretation, and provides for greater distribution of literary works to the public. The Lost Girls, however, unintentionally makes the case for one notable exception: After watching, you may well wish that Peter Pan could be re-copyrighted to be kept out of the hands of anyone inclined to make this much of a mess of it.
Based on a novel by Laurie Fox, with material that probably worked better on the page, The Lost Girls follows Wendy Darling, granddaughter of the original Wendy who went to Neverland with Peter Pan all those years ago. Riffing on the epilogue that author J.M. Barrie added to the story four years after it debuted as a play, it follows the idea that Peter, losing interest in an aging Wendy, would take her daughter Jane to Neverland, and later her daughter, Margaret (renamed Wendy again for The Lost Girls). Barrie portrayed Pan as a boy who needed an older girl pal to play surrogate mother, rather than any kind of romantic creeper, but it’s not hard to stretch into a grooming metaphor, especially if the actor playing Pan (18 year-old Louis Partridge, in this case) is clearly post-adolescent.
We first meet the junior Wendy as a young homeschooled kid (Amelia Minto), whose mother has disappeared for reasons nobody talks about. Her Nana, the original Wendy (Vanessa Redgrave, massively elevating the material), prepares her for the day that she’ll be 12 or 13 and find a strange boy crying on her floor. Sure enough, she ages up into a new actress (Emily Carey) and it happens, when a very casual Peter shows up in a green T-shirt and jeans. Demonstrating that his vernacular isn’t quite up to date, he calls her a “queer girl” and invites her to “make like a leaf and blow.”
What follows is an extremely low-tech trip to Neverland, beginning with flying effects that Superman IV would be ashamed of, followed by scenes in … a field. And a cave. And some unspecified underwater area. Wendy wants to kiss Peter, but he’s not into that. Unlike Pan, Hook (Iain Glen) is, and he’s portrayed as an actual groomer who can’t wait for Wendy to grow up.
Time passes, and Wendy grows into an adult who now has an Italian accent for no reason, except that she’s played by writer-director Livia De Paolis. She’s a writer, who marries a musician named Adam (Parker Sawyers) and has a kid named Berry (Ava Fillery, and then Ella-Rae Smith). While Vanessa Redgrave apparently remains 80 years old for about 30 years, adult Wendy still can’t get over her memories of Neverland, especially when she starts experiencing visions of Hook again.
If only the point of all of this were clearer. Is Peter a sign of mental illness? Is he a bad guy pursuing the new girl in each generation, even if he loses interest as soon as they become teens? Did Peter influence Wendy’s taste in men? And what exactly did happen to her mother (Joely Richardson)? If the film has answers, they’re harder to find than the way to Neverland. And without much of a budget to envision fantastic effects, this is the sort of thing that might play better on the stage, especially since De Paolis has more of a pedigree there.
“Dark Peter Pan” isn’t exactly a groundbreaking take. Even Hook went there to some degree. On the far end of the spectrum, Alan Moore’s nearly identically titled Lost Girls used it as the basis for erotica. Yet somehow, none managed to be as compelling as the original tale, which is full of subtext the individual readers can consider for themselves. The best movie adaptation remains P.J. Hogan’s 2003 version, which radically cast actual kids and stuck mostly to the text.
DePaolis’ thoughts on said text, however, are so unclear as to be inscrutable. As such, they’re hardly worth anyone else’s time while so many other versions of the same story exist.
19 Comments
“Peter, losing interest in an aging Wendy,”…boy, what a jerk.
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So Vanessa Redgrave’s daughter Joely Richardson plays her daughter in this, but the younger actress is not a Redgrave? Have they finally run out of Redgraves?? Is the acting dynasty at an end??
Is the acting dynasty at an end??Not at all! Joley Richardson has a daughter named Daisy Bevan who is indeed a working actress. Not sure how old the adult Wendy is in this film, but Bevan is 30, so it might have worked. Also Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson (RIP) have a son who is also a working actor named Micheal Richardson.
I was quite amused when Once Upon a Time went all the way to “Peter’s just a complete asshole. Oh, and a deadbeat dad.”
That was definitely one of the most entertaining “this show is batshit INSANE” storylines.Also, the actor who played Peter Pan was amazing. Which only made it all the more cringe-inducing for the one playing Henry…
Was “Once Upon A Time” the show that was developed when a straight adaptation of Fables fell through?The reason I ask is that Peter Pan was going to be the secret ultimate villain in Fables, but at the time the character was still under copyright in some territories including the U.K so they made it someone from another story entirely.
they put peter pan in cargo pants.
Disappointed this was not an adaptation of the Alan Moore/Melinda Gebbie graphic novel. [Edit: Oops, missed that this was mentioned in the article. Still, shared universes are still in vogue, right?]
Moore’s Lost Girls was probably one of the dullest erotica I’ve ever read.
I strongly disliked that book, but I’m afraid to try to sell it lest I wind up on an FBI list.
“Time passes, and Wendy grows into an adult who now has an Italian accent for no reason” – oh so it’s THAT kind of bad movie. Love it.
You and Paul is in it for fame and fortune?
Are there paragraphs missing from this review?
Casting a post-pubescent Peter is a long established tradition… as long as it’s an actress.
Sounds more like Peter PANTS, eh? Eh?(Please tell me there’s a fellow Brit here who can appreciate that awful pun)
Has the “same exact story, but we reversed the identities” approach ever lead to something good? Really wondering.
A cool riff on the Peter Pan story is the novel Lost Boy by Christina Henry. It’s like an origin story for Captain Hook, and it makes Peter look like…well, a giant asshole. Kinda turns the whole thing into a Shakespearean tragedy. I dug it!
One of my favorite things about the original Peter Pan story was the little aside the author threw in about the origins of Hook, saying “he’s actually from a well-known and respected family, and if we told you their name, you’d recognize it”, which is then never really referenced again (outside of Hook’s obsession with “good form”). Does the book you reference get into that at all?