Portraits of Dangerous Women review – dog car crash sets off baffling and peculiar drama

Three unlikely women are pitched together by a muddled plot with results that are short on both drama and comedy

This bafflingly peculiar and lifeless dramedy comes from Swiss film-maker Pascal Bergamin, who is based in Zurich and London and has released some English-language work in the past. This film has a rural British setting with British characters played by British actors, but it has the feel of something Google-translated from another project, perhaps with a European setting; there is a repeated and weirdly emphatic reference to two art dealers from the German town of Cottbus, mysterious individuals who never appear on screen, and whose existence does not serve any satisfying or interesting purpose.

But that objection could be raised against every single character in the film. A strange – and strangely unconvincing – event brings three women together. Steph (Jeany Spark) is an unhappy teacher; Tina (Tara Fitzgerald) is a mysteriously overqualified caretaker at Steph’s school and Ashley (Yasmin Monet Prince) is a troubled, smart teen with artistic interests. While driving her car, and quarrelling with her dad Jon (Mark Lewis Jones) who’s in the passenger seat, Steph hits a dog – which has also somehow been hit, perhaps immediately before or immediately afterwards, by a second car driven by Tina; and so the very first significant moment of the film is muddled and duplicated. At the roadside Ashley claims she is the dog’s owner, and is angry and distraught.

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