Raven Banner Film Review - Level 16

Vivien (Katie Douglas) is all business as a self-proclaimed Top Girl at Verstalis Academy in her Level 16 or graduating year. We first met Vivien when she was ten-year-old on Level 10 where she made a personal sacrifice to help Sophia (Celina Martin). For that act, Vivien was punished hardening her making her determined not to let that occur again. She is driven, follows all of the rules and can exhort the virtues of the Academy on command. Vertstalis Academy is a boarding school for girls that is at best a military type academy and at worst a prison disguised as a school. The girls have never been outside, are not taught to read but instead are drilled in the need to be clean, obedient and virtuous with the opposite of this being the first vice curiosity. Sophia challenges the schools' structure and authorities. She has information that she has been harbouring for three Levels letting Vivien in on what she knows forcing the later to question everything she has learned since she entered the school at a very young girl.

Writer-director Danishka Esterhazy presents a story that seems outlandish but is not un-similar to events in the recent past where women went to finishing colleges, took HOMECE in school and were taught to be ladylike above everything else. While their boyfriends and future Husbands went to top Universities normally nearby to obtain degrees in science, engineering, law, and medicine in order to be the leaders of the future.

The setting is a utilitarian, barren and colourless where the students are named after movie actresses from the '40s and '50s hence the names Vivien, Sophia, Rita, and Hedy. They are conditions to respond to buzzers and lights that indicate scheduled times to take their medicine, eat their meals or line up for assembly under the piercing gaze of head mistress Ms. Brixil (Sara Canning). They are trained to think that the character of women in the 40's and 50's is the ideal. Wholesomeness that is hammered home on the special treat of Movie Picture Night where they rewatch, all mouthing the words of a black and white feature for the umpteenth time of one of their namesakes.

Level 16 is a dystopian future take on the fate women in a totalitarian paternalistic regimented world that is shocking not out of the realm of being duplicated today. On the mildest level students are directed towards a stream of study quite often based on preconceived factors rather than objective ones. Esterhazy's feature is engaging and suspenseful featuring well-developed characters on both sides of the ledger and to keep the prison metaphor going the audience will be clearly rooting for the inmates over the guards and warden.

*** Out of 4.

Level 16 | Danishka Esterhazy | Canada | 2019 | 102 Minutes.

Tags: Boarding School, Dystopian, Routine, Punishment, Discipline, Head Mistress, Graduation, Obedience, Purity, Virtue, Top Girl.