NOCEBO (2022) | Film Review

Nocebo: a harmless substance or treatment that when taken by or administered to a patient is associated with harmful side effects or worsening of symptoms due to negative expectations or the psychological condition of the patient

When Nocebo begins, the audience is just as bewildered as to what is happening as Christine (Eva Green). A children’s fashion designer, Christine opens the film on top of the world, thriving at what seems like a runway enroute to mega success. During the event, a random phone call leads to a disheveled dog, and then BAM! We flash forward several months to see a completely altered version of Christine from those early frames.

Now suffering from a myriad of health and psychological disorders, Christine is relegated to her home as she attempts to compose herself long enough to reestablish her career, while simultaneously caring for her family. Her waning health and excessive pharmaceutical dependency concerns both her husband, Felix (Mark Strong), and her precocious yet slightly “off” daughter, Roberta (Billie Gadson). Christine is a mess: forgetful, frequently doubled over in pain, and mostly hysterical.

Help arrives in the form of a Filipino caretaker named Diana (Chai Fonacier); a woman Christine has no recollection of hiring. As her loss of memory is quite common, Christine allows Diana to move in and tend to her family, and eventually suggests more alternative methods of health care to aid Christine’s growing instability. Though Felix is immediately suspect of Diana and her methods, Christine finds a bit of relief and allows the questionably homegrown treatments to continue. Slowly but surely, Felix begins to notice drastic changes in his wife, and his finger is pointing squarely at the demurely unthreatening Diana.

Written by Garrett Shanley and directed by Lorcan Finnegan, Nocebo masks a heavy message simmering beneath the layers of the witchy voodoo machinations of their story. It is one that is peeled back slowly, layer-by-layer, until the ultimate destination is revealed near the final frame. What Nocebo ultimately lacks in subtlety (the ending is akin to taking a hammer to paper mache), it delivers in poignancy. Without spoiling, this hidden meaning is shining a blinding light on privilege’s decimation of impoverished nations, and it sticks. It just needed to illuminate this aspect of the story far sooner than the final act to truly kick the audience in the gut as intended.

Mark Strong always adds to any production with merely his presence, but his role here packs little in terms of substance. While there is a bit of back-and-forth as to if Christine should partake in questionable medical care, the majority of the film centers on Christine and Diane’s eclectic relationship.

Chai Fonacier is effectively creepy as she carefully bounces between naïve innocence and potential sadist. As Diane builds a stronger relationship with Roberta than her own mother’s, Fonacier continues to crank up our uneasiness. She never quite reaches that Rebecca De Mornay level of nervous energy, but by the end, our spines are sufficiently tingled.

Nocebo belongs to Eva Green, an actress who has always deserved far more acclaim than she has received, and once again she delivers. Christine is manic, charming, unsettled, hysterical, crazed, resolute, determined, humbled, arrogant, and even a bit jovial. The character runs the gamut of emotions as she is plagued by an undiagnosed illness…or worse. Eva Green is the fire that lights Nocebo, insanely shaking a rather average story to life with sheer talent and will. While this story may not stay with you for as long as the filmmakers had intended, and the ending deserved a stronger fleshing out, Green makes it worth the watch.