Writer-director Saulė Bliuvaitė’s debut feature ‘Toxic’, in competition at the Swiss Locarno Film Festival, is a hard-hitting coming-of-age story that eschews clichés as its 13-year-old protagonists come to terms with their bodies and identity a hot summer in Lithuania.
Marija (Vesta Matulytė) and Kristina (Ieva Rupeikaitė) are two young girls who form a friendship while becoming aspirants to a modeling school that promises an escape from their bleak reality.
“When I was 13, it was very popular among very, very young teenage girls from 12 to 13 years old to register with modeling agencies,” says Bliuvaitė. Variety. “Girls from the Baltic countries were very popular. You know, pale skin and thin figures. My own experience is participating in this casting, standing in these very long lines at the mall. We all look the same in this girl factory.”
“I was actually registered with the modeling agency. I was very skinny at the time – I was 14 or something like that. And I remember the lady measured me, and she said, you know, you have to lose from here, and started drawing lines on my body, like which parts are too big. And I remember my mother’s eyes. She looked at her and thought, ‘Where are these big parts that I should lose?’ Looking at it now, it was a pretty intense experience for a very young teenage girl.”
Sold by Bendita Film Sales, some of the inspiration for the film came from Ashley Sabin and David Redmond’s 2011 documentary ‘Girl Model’, while some came from her own experience. “When I saw this film, I remembered what it was like, the castings I took part in.”
When casting her own female leads, was she ever concerned about replicating some of the circumstances she wanted to document? “We have met a lot of girls in the last two years. And these casting sessions were very quiet. We would meet the girls and talk to them. And it was part of gathering information. Not just to cast the film, but we had conversations and these girls talked about their experiences related to the script and the story. This meeting was for discussions and I would also use their stories in the film. So I tried to take the edge of the casting this way. Once we had a pool of potential candidates for the main characters, we ran workshops with all the girls. We would do some acting games. I wanted to make this experience, the casting process, enjoyable.”
Even though the story is set in this social realist world, the film feels very different from that kind of naturalism. “I really tried to get as far away as possible from the coming-of-age teen movie, where the camera is in your face and you follow the emotions of the characters. I also wanted to make this film about the environment; about the places where the story takes place. There are also these scary elements, maggots and all that, because from my experience in teenage life, you have a huge zone in front of you. It’s like unknown territory for you. Many things are very scary. I wanted to give the audience the feeling of this horror movie atmosphere.”
And nothing is scarier than the changes in your own body. “I wanted to make this film very meaty, because it’s a lot about the meat; to let the audience feel this flesh through the screen. To show scenes that these girls go through, deep situations that are very connected to the flesh. To have a piercing in your tongue. You’re touching a body you’ve never touched before. You are as if you are working with your own body. You don’t understand. You feel awkward, you know? And I feel like there’s a kind of strangeness and ugliness to it, you know, but also a lot of mystery.
“Toxic” is produced by Lithuanian independent studio Akis Bado, founded by Giedre Burokaritè and Robertas Nevecka and based in Vilnius. The studio is best known for the animated short films ‘Snow Shelter’ (2020) and ‘Mora Mora’ (2021), which have won several awards. The title, financed with the support of the Lithuanian Film Center and the Lithuanian National Radio and Television, also won the Work in Progress Award at Meeting Point Vilnius 2024.
