Delia Owens made a bestseller three years ago with “The Song of the Crayfish”. Now the story of the “march girl” Kya is also coming to the cinema – with beautiful landscape shots, a multi-layered plot and a full roar of kitsch.
You don’t really know where you stand with “The Song of the Crayfish”. Coming-of-age story? outsider narrative? tearjerker? Thriller? legal drama? nature documentary? Kind of all at once. That’s undoubtedly what makes the film so appealing, which is now coming to cinemas under the direction of newcomer Olivia Newman.
A charm that the literary template already exuded. Author Delia Owens may be 73, but she too was in some ways a newcomer when her book came out. After all, “The Song of the Crayfish” was the novel debut of the zoologist, who had previously devoted herself primarily to researching flora and fauna. However, this did not detract from the success of the work, which promptly mutated into an international bestseller three years ago.
Will the film be able to build on this success? In any case, he makes an effort, for example by trying to adequately depict the author’s love of nature on the canvas. The landscape shots, which were actually shot in Louisiana but are supposed to show the swamps in North Carolina, are undoubtedly a highlight of the literary film adaptation. The plot also follows the novel very closely.
Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) lives with her family in the inhospitable marshlands of North Carolina. Her father (Garret Dillahunt) is a drunk and thug, from whom the mother (Ahna O’Reilly) flees and finally all of Kya’s siblings flee until she is left alone with him. But one day he also disappeared and the girl was left to her own devices in the middle of the swamps.
Kya struggles through. But the residents of the nearby town of Barkley Cove, who only disparagingly call her the “march girl”, are suspicious of her. Only the boy Tate (Taylor John Smith) is interested in her. In fact, the two fall in love before the romance ends abruptly when Tate moves abroad to study. Kya is suddenly on her own again. Not least to escape her loneliness, she then accepts the advances of windy Chase (Harris Dickinson).
Tate didn’t get in touch for a long time. When he suddenly reappears on the scene, Kya persistently brushes him off at first. But her relationship with Chase also falls apart when she finds out that he has been engaged to someone else for a long time. As if the love affair wasn’t bad enough, one day Chase is found dead at the foot of a watchtower in the swamps. For most people in Barkley Cove it is quickly clear: “It was the ‘march girl’!” Although there is virtually no evidence, Kya is tried. Can she escape prejudice? Does Tate get a second chance after all? And who really has Chase on his conscience?
There was a lot of female power on the set of “The Song of the Crayfish”. Newman was joined as director by Lucy Alibar as screenwriter, Polly Morgan as cinematographer, and Lauren Neustadter and Hollywood star Reese Witherspoon as producers. On the screen, however, one can only speak of “female empowerment” to a limited extent, even when it’s about the genesis of a strong female heroine. The film is simply too cheesy in many places for that.
Especially when it comes to love relationships, “The Song of the Crayfish” seems rather old-fashioned, like a high-gloss Rosamunde Pilcher film adaptation. In the end, Kya just can’t do without the guys, even if they degenerate into exaggerated stereotypes in the flick – here the softie Tate, there Hallodri Chase. Some dialogue even turns into a moment of shame. A little less frosting over the whole story would actually have been more.
“The Song of the Crayfish” is now in German cinemas.
