‘Queens of the Qing Dynasty’ Review: Ashley McKenzie Crafts An Intimate And Rich Story of Friendship [TIFF]
theplaylist.netAshley McKenzie, the Nova Scotia-based director of the elliptical and scarifyingly intimate methadone-addiction drama “Werewolf,” returns with another tale of codependence and the Canadian welfare state.
Talking to Film Comment in 2018, McKenzie copped to a desire “to have more extensive scenes and more elaborate choreography and staging” in future projects and hinted at her then-gestating second feature. “The elevator pitch would probably say ‘Certain Women’ meets Alan Clarke BBC portrait dramas,” she said.
And so it is: “Queens of the Qing Dynasty,” about a neurodivergent teenager hospitalized following a(nother) suicide attempt, and the genderqueer Chinese-immigrant advocate she bonds with during her recovery, is at once rigorously intimate and richly symbolic.
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