Starring: Julia Savage, Simon Baker, Yael Stone, Josh Lawson, Heather Mitchell, John Waters, Will McDonald.
Distributor: Bonsai Films
Runtime: 101 mins. Reviewed in Sep 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
| 
| 
Blaze is a 12-year-old who lives in her imagination, but who witnesses a violent rape and is called to testify in court, bringing on psychotic experiences and traumatic images.
Blaze is intriguing for those audiences who enjoy being intrigued. However, underlying the intriguing visuals is a straightforward plotline, a 12-year-old girl – called Blaze – witnesses a violent rape in a lane, is unable to help the dying woman. The girl testifies in pre-trial and has to decide whether she will testify during the trial itself.
We first see Blaze as a little girl, sitting in a room with a backdrop of tall panels of exotic paintings. Then we see her at 12. But, what we see is the dramatic psychic imagination of Blaze, a lover of Lord of the Rings, her room full of pairs of toys which she sees come alive, but the presence of an enormous Dragon, bright scarlet colours and feathers, like a gigantic toy, which is her companion, who embraces her, shelters her. She can move from the realism of breakfast with her father (Baker) back into her exotic imagination.
She a friend at school in whom she confides. She loves her father but becomes an exasperated with him, and definitely he with her. But, it is on the way home from school that she witnesses the crime – the couple played by Hannah (Stone) and Jake (Lawson). And, so, her inability to help, her hiding, her fears, all become part of her psychic and traumatic imagination. In looking at the poster for the film, one sees a miniature Dragon in the mouth of Blaze, her face angry, and the Dragon breathing forth a stream of flames. This scene occurs in the-trial hearing when she looks at the accused and screams/streams the flames at him.
Blaze is sent to therapy but the first therapist is too matter-of-fact. It is only later, when her exasperated father tries a different therapist that Blaze finds a sympathetic soul mate.
There is all kind of visual symbolism at the end, Blaze making a decision about what she will do for the court case, then facing her Dragon, going through the motions of destroying it, but then becoming one with her Dragon, her future Dragon personality.
An unexpected, dramatic, visually arresting and tantalising study of a young girl and her traumas.
12 Random Films…
