Portraits of Dangerous Women: Film Review

Portraits of Dangerous Women nobly attempts to tell a story of unexpected friendship, but the result is sadly an awkward mess.

They clash with two other women involved in the accident, Ashley (Yasmin Monet Prince) and Tina (Tara Fitzgerald), and the four all slowly develop unexpected connections with one another from the strange, unfortunate incident.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I feel bad coming down harshly on any small film with obvious good intentions. Looking at this setup and the way it very loosely plays out, I can appreciate what the film is going for. It’s a portrayal of how an awkward, uncomfortable situation can be made into an accomplishment of understanding and comradery. It’s a tale of friendships being formed from one of the most unexpected places. You don’t see that done too often in circumstances quite like the one here, so it’s a very noble attempt by which I’m sure some people will be won over.

Unfortunately, that attempt is done so dryly and sterilely that it doesn’t hit as it intended. The storytelling is a rare combination of scattershot and jarringly slow, with many scenes just … happening before they abruptly cut to the next slightly strange interaction. It’s not necessarily lifeless; it’s just aggressively stilted in its editing and cinematography. I wouldn’t be surprised if the filmmakers were influenced by Wes Anderson, as Portraits of Dangerous Women really made me think of his style, but with half the dedication that at least makes his movies memorable. 

Portraits of Dangerous Women feels like a set of sitcom episodes just haphazardly stapled together, and not even a particularly funny sitcom. The focus of the plot keeps changing before it feels fully realized, and characters come in and out of the story at such irregular intervals that I was constantly forgetting they existed until they popped back up. Near the end of the movie, Steph has a major falling out with another character that we saw a whopping one time beforehand. Several subplots are even introduced and then entirely dropped, like a mishap that involves paintings getting stolen which never factors into anything. Steph adopts a cat and hooks up with a pet shop employee … only to then bail on both and never see either of them again.

So much of what little plot there is revolves around the aftermath of the dog-killing accident … not exactly the recipe for a humorous time. Like I mentioned, I think the film is trying to embrace the discomfort that comes from that, so it kind of works in that sense. The problem is that nothing else other than that strange emotion is holding your attention, so you’re left sitting there wondering what you’re gaining from watching it.

The one saving grace here is that Portraits of Dangerous Women is at least filled with entertaining performances. Everyone delivers an amusing amount of dry, British attitude that’s enough to inject a modicum of investment to what you’re watching. It’s not that no one is trying; they just don’t have many interesting or entertaining things to say, despite the script’s attempts. I also really need to give credit to one specific line that really stayed with me, one that’s said by one of the film’s elderly characters: “Collect as many nice moments as you can so you have something to go back to at the end.” That alone says a lot about the process of life and how it changes as you grow older. 

If nothing else, I again admire Portraits of Dangerous Women for trying to capture that essence, even if it fails as a movie. But for me, that’s all the film has going for it: attempts. Aside from the acting, nothing about it held my attention and nothing except a couple of lines will leave a lasting impression on me. But I have a feeling there is an audience for this, and I’d be able to understand how. Maybe not a big audience, but an audience nonetheless. I’ll let you decide if you want to try and be part of it.

Portraits of Dangerous Women will be released in select UK & Irish cinemas on October 11, 2024.