The drives to compete, perform well, win, and be better than everyone else exist in all of us—albeit to varying degrees—but in the debut feature from Lauren Hadaway, The Novice, these drives may be all that is behind the wheel. Isabelle Fuhrman (The Orphan) stars as Alex, a freshman in college who has her sights set only on her goals and her blinders fully engaged. She joins the school’s rowing team a novice, and while her fellow novices are there to make friends and stay fit, all it takes is mention of a “time to beat” and a vacant spot on the varsity team for Alex to turn the sport into an all-consuming mania.

When we first meet Alex, she has just submitted and re-submitted the same test twice during the same block, much to her TA’s dismay, then she is making a mad dash to her first rowing practice. Hadaway, her editors, and her cinematographer do a fantastic job of shocking our systems at this start and putting us right in Alex’s “firing-on-all-cylinders” headspace. Quick, jarring cuts, swirling, repeated dialogue, and shallow focus shots all jostle you into the world of someone who is in a fervent, ravenous pursuit of greatness. Some of the repeated dialogue—Alex’s coach’s refrain of “legs, body, arms, arms, body, legs,” for example—becomes almost incessant, a chilling reminder of the mental pummelling Alex puts herself through every day. But the pummelling also becomes extremely physical, the film’s tightly framed shots conveying with lurid detail the strain Alex enacts on her body during row sessions; the film’s set pieces abstracting place and time into pure sweat and adrenaline.

Putting all of herself into the demands of her role, Fuhrman is every ounce Alex, and it verges on frightening how automaton-like but also fiercely human she becomes. Like Natalie Portman’s Nina in Black Swan, or Miles Teller’s Andrew in Whiplash, Alex’s manic pursuit of excellence gets less relatable as the film goes along, but Fuhrman’s hints at frailty beneath Alex’s steely, unrelenting focus keep the character grounded and us as audience members invested throughout. It should also be mentioned that Alex’s story is unique in that it lacks the domineering figures of Black Swan and Whiplash that actively push or try to possess her. Amy Forsyth as fellow over-achiever, Jamie, is Alex’s most logical opponent, but even this notion is largely a fabrication of Alex’s self-motivating enterprise. Alex has herself convinced of everything: her threats, her shortcomings, and ultimately what measures her success. As the film progresses, Hadaway depicts this delirium as deriving from and manifesting in increasingly absurd and surreal scenes, such as visions of a crab (the rowing term for losing control of one’s oar) being dropped into a pot of boiling water.

It is frustrating, then, when the film’s story all but disappears, inciting action becomes scarce, and this impressionistic, cerebral escalating becomes all that propels Alex forwards. Hadaway also leans heavily on a number of musical set pieces throughout The Novice, and while some of these are used wisely to ease the breakneck pace of the film, others occur to you as monotonous when it becomes evident that they are all conveying the same plot information. This is not to say that The Novice ever becomes a chore, but that it hits a point of being one-note, with the director only looking for new ways to portray characteristics we already know of Alex, rather than heighten the dramatic tension.

Fortunately, these decisions still produce for us an engrossing and harrowing character study. The film is also bolstered by what could be a precedent setting performance by Fuhrman, whose physicality and white hot intensity makes everything else around her seem muted, and rightly so. The Novice can’t help but be sucked in to this whirlwind Alex creates, and while this makes for a bull-headed film at times, Hadaway has nonetheless crafted an electrifying and densely wound character study for her debut.

CAST & CREDITS

Directed by Lauren Hadaway

Lauren Hadaway is a writer and director who comes from the post-production sound world. She’s a 2018 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Fellow. She’s from Texas, and she recently relocated to Paris from Los Angeles.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Alex Engemann, Michael Tennant, Chris Hines, Ryan Bartecki

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER

Jason Bourke, Greg Paraskov

SOUND MIXER

Scott Bell

PRODUCTION DESIGN

Eva Kozlova

CASTING DIRECTOR

Matthew Lessall, Nicole Hilliard-Forde

CAST

Isabelle Fuhrman, Amy Forsyth, Dilone, Kate Drummond, Jonathan Cherry, Charlotte Ubben

DIRECTOR

Lauren Hadaway

PRODUCER

Ryan Hawkins, Kari Hollend, Steven Sims, Zack Zucker

SCREENWRITER

Lauren Hadaway

CINEMATOGRAPHER

Todd Martin

EDITOR

Nathan Nugent

COMPOSER

Alex Weston