Ah…the old non-linear timeline trope. Quentin Tarantino used it so often that it became known as the Tarantino effect. He did reinvigorate the use of it but he didn’t invent it…not by a long shot! The earliest recorded use of it was over seventy five years earlier in DW Griffith’s Intolerance. Admittedly we’re all very used to the jumping around in time whether it be a simple flashback or the whole thing running back wards like Irréversible, a fifty/fifty split like Memento, or a total casserole like Tenet! Actually I really enjoyed Tenet and saw it several times in the short period between lockdowns.
So, by now you’ve probably guessed that Scarlet Winter is one of those films which plays around with the chronological order of the narrative. We start off with a calm scene of a river flowing in front of a wood with a snow covered floor. There is a woman’s voice speaking gently about how she would have done things differently if she had known how things would work out. I’ll be honest and say that I’m not sure which of the three main female characters is speaking but, looking back at how things ended, it could have been any one of them!
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If I Knew How It All Ends
In short we have Mark (Gregory Waits) who is married to Sidney (Nadine van Asbeck). However, it isn’t the happiest of marriages and Mark has fallen for Naomi (Sophie Moshofsky) and wants to leave Sidney and marry Naomi. Other main characters are Richie (Ryan Hope Travis), Mark’s friend and workmate, and Carly (Kaitlin Leddy) who is Naomi’s roommate and friend. Incidentally, this cast are mainly relative newcomers. Nadine van Asbeck has a few films to her name but this is her first English language project. This is Gregory Waits, Sophie Moshofsky, and Kaitlin Leddy’s feature debuts. Well, Kaitlin Leddy had an uncredited part as a party goer in Babylon and, if I remember rightly, she could very easily have been lost in the crowd.
After the opening wintery scene we fade out to the title card and fade in to Mark’s face. He is obviously waking up and disoriented but gets a rude awakening when he discovers a blood stained knife in his hand. A rapid self pat down tells Mark that he isn’t the one that the knife got stuck into. He drags himself upright and we can see he is a kitchen…a dining kitchen. There are bits and pieces, like a cheese board and a cork screw, lying around. His demeanour suggests that he had an awful lot to drink last night.
I Would’ve Done Things Differently
He looks out of the window and there’s a white car in his drive. Whose is it? We don’t know but I got the feeling that Mark does. He makes his way unsteadily up the stairs and gets to the bedroom where he collapses in a choking, sobbing wail of grief. Naomi is lying on the bed in a pool of blood. He doesn’t check for signs of life or attempt any sort of resuscitation just continues with his outpouring of misery. We now cut to the opening credits shown over more shots of the winter wonderland that we’re located in. And off we go into a whodunnit blended with a what the hell are we going to do with the body film.
You wouldn’t realise that the cast are mainly in their debut features. They all have a bit of experience from TV shows or short features but they all come across as old hands. It is even writer/director Munjal Yagnik’s feature debut. But Scarlet Winter is slick, polished and professional. If this is, for most of the cast and crew, their debut then I am most definitely looking forward to seeing what comes next. Nadine van Asbeck in particular had me worrying if there was something awful going on in her private life as she was so intense as the “At the end of her tether” Sidney. Scarlet Winter gets a digital release on 10/02/2025 by Miracle Media.
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