[Film Review] Black Medicine (2021)

If what you need in your life is a story about mother/daughter relationships hinging on guilt and sacrifice, I’ve got the film for you!

Written and directed by Colum Eastwood, Black Medicine (2021) is an Irish suspense thriller that follows Jo (Antonia Campbell-Hughes), a disgraced anesthetist who is grieving the loss of her daughter. Cast off by the medical profession, Jo now performs procedures in back alleys for criminals, and gets paid handsomely in cash. When a new client, Bernadette (Orla Brady) asks her to do something unthinkable, Jo has a decision to make - do what has been requested of her, collect the pay and move on with her lonely life, or refuse to compromise her ethics, and risk her own life and the lives of others. 

Jo is faced with a painful trolley problem, where she is forced to choose who to save and who to let die. As if that’s not agonizing enough, this choice is balancing on a foundation of not only her grief for her daughter, but a feeling that she failed her daughter as a doctor when she couldn’t save her. Jo cannot separate her current predicament with Bernadette from those complicated feelings. 

The adults in this movie are driven by a desire or a need to help children. Whether or not you agree with their actions, they  are trying to act in the best interests of the kids in their care.  But saving one child always seems to put another in danger. As Bernadette is trying to save her daughter, she justifies herself to Jo many times saying “you would have done the same for your daughter if you could.” Jo insists that’s not true, but her protests sound empty and flat, because we as the audience don’t know her well enough to predict how she would act if the roles were reversed. There is a brief scene early in the movie, in which Jo is going to perform an abortion on young woman - perhaps a teenager or in her early 20s - and Jo reassures her and validates her choice. Jo might see the young woman as just a kid herself, and she understands how hard it is to be a mother, so she is respectful of the choice to not to become one. It’s clear that Jo takes parenthood seriously, and she can’t help but act like a mother when a child needs help, even if it is detrimental to her own well-being.

Though I can feel Bernadette’s desperation to save her daughter, Lucy (Julie Lamberton), she is not a sympathetic enough character. Most of the time we see Bernadette on screen, she is portrayed as an evil crime boss, coercing those around her to commit dangerous crimes. There are a few sweet scenes with her daughter, but they are not enough for me to get behind Bernadette's actions. All we really learn about Lucy is that she is chronically ill and dying, she does not get character development beyond that. Her one defining action in the film, making origami animals, seems to be referencing Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, a book about a dying girl who is determined to fold 1,000 cranes before she dies. It’s a nice reference, but it still doesn’t tell us anything about Lucy - she’s dying, that’s all we get to know, and it’s difficult to cheer for a character you don’t know.

Overall, Black Medicine has a predictable set-up and familiar plot points throughout, but there are some surprises, and a genuine feeling of suspense. A contributing factor to the suspense is an effective score that often merges with sounds of medical equipment for an uncanny experience. Antonia Campbell-Hughes and Orla Brady give emotional performances, playing opposite each other, and they carry the scenes they are in. For a medical thriller, there is not a lot of blood and guts, the focus is on the characters and their stories. Black Medicine does not over-explain or dump a bunch of exposition, instead it allows viewers to piece together Jo’s backstory from context. At times, there are some pacing issues and clunky dialogue, and a bit of a cheesy ending, but I will grant that it kept me in suspense and surprised me a few times. Most of all, this story is sad, and it’s clear there can be no happy ending for everyone involved.

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