Displaying items by tag: Madeleine Madden

SACCHARINE

Australia, 2026, 113 minutes, Colour.

Midori Francis, Danielle Macdonald, Madeleine Madden, Showko Showfukutei, Robert Taylor.

Directed by Natalie Erika James.

Saccharine is an adjective used to describe something that is overly or sickishly sweet. It typically refers to flavors, but it is most often used to criticize things like a person's demeanor, a voice, or a story as being excessively sentimental, cloying, or insincere. (Google definition)

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The first 30 minutes of this drama which combines realistic themes with horror hallucinations and ghostly presences… treats its theme of eating problems and consequences in grim but realistic style. Hana is a young medical student, involved with a friendly group of fellow students in autopsy training. But, at home, she keeps on gorging, preoccupied, but attracted by Alanya who runs a 12 week exercise weight reduction course. And then joins up and there are many scenes of her dedication to the exercise and receiving affirmation. And then she meets a friend from school, overweight in the past, but recommending a course of tablets which reduces weight abnormally quickly.

So, on the level of realism, the film is a serious look at body image problems for women, weight and loss, the role of exercise, the role of medication, especially suspicious tablets, the repercussions on the psyche of the overweight woman, the pressure of her caring and fussy slim Asian mother, the background of her obese Australian father.

But the film does not stay on the realistic level. It uses elements of horror, especially body horror (remembering the impact of the recent The Substance), the presence of the obese dead woman who has donated her body for study purposes, but more and more mysteriously present to Hana, trying to persuade her best friend to see this presence, nightmares with the obese body descending on her…

And a lot of emotional consequences, the ghost pressing her to eat more and more, the strange tablets and their contents, rapid weight loss, interactions with the manager of the course, sexual attraction, psychological distortions, some of the sequences not for the cinema fainthearted.

This is very much a female-oriented film, the writer-director and producers and many of the technical staff female. And while the title is saccharine and its overtones of sickly sweet (as is so much of the food that Hana devours), it is the theme of devouring that pervades all of Hana’s life – and a grimly graphic devouring conclusion to the film.

1. The meaning and application of the title? Sickly sweet? The surface personality of Hana? Food, confectionery, being sickly sweet?
2. An Australian film, the success of small-budget Australian horror films in the 2020s? Sense of menace, a visual horror?
3. Themes of body-horror, films of the 2020s?
4. The Australian setting, a universal setting, universal themes?
5. Preoccupation with health, body image, weight and weight loss, hunger and devouring food, physical implications, mental implications?
6. The opening realism for Hana, her body, weight, self-consciousness, eating? Her ethnic heritage, her thin Asian mother, continually fussing and cleaning, the contrast with her obese father, the audience not seeing him till later?
7. Hana, living alone, medical student, the range of students, her friends, the laboratory, the autopsies, close-ups of the process?
8. Josie has her friend, Josie’s attitude, conversations, advice, concern?
9. The encounter with Alanya, attractive, persuasive, the 12 weeks course, Alanaya and her body image, Hana agreeing, the exercise regime, measuring her weight on the chart, the exertion, losing some weight? The attraction to Alanya?

• The encounter with a friend from school, not immediately recognising her, the photo of her past, weight, the new image, discussion about the pills, giving her the pills, taunting, the decision to take one, the range of pills, a drastic loss of weight, charting it, and the contrast with her eating even more, greed, at the shops, taking home the food, the confectionery? Her mother’s arrival and criticisms? The mother leaving?
• Taking the the autopsy, crashing and making them pools of ash by herself?
• The sense of another presence, the transition from the film’s realism to horror tropes? Seeing the reflection of the obese ghost in the back of spoons? Mirrors?
• The obese woman, donation of her body for research, vast size, the close-ups of her corpse, the autopsy? Hana going to see the sister, the encouragement, good comments about the dead woman?
• Trying to get Josie to have a sense of the ghostly presence, failing? The nightmare, the vast corpse descending on her?
• Hana upset, losing weight, but the mystery of how? The visit to her father, antagonism? Nightmares? The sense of the ghostly presence? Devouring more and more food?
• The confrontation with Alanya, the reconciliation, the sexual encounter and the consequences?
• Josie helping, the scenes of the autopsy, the meals together, Hana at home, more and more food?
• The graphic conclusion, the confrontation with Alanya, Hana devouring her?