Avalon Fast’s Camp is a film that you experience more than watch, and goodness, if it isn’t a wonderfully gorgeous experience in what feels like a constant dreamlike state. Fast knocks it out of the park with her second feature.
Emily’s (Zola Grimmer) life has been scarred by tragedy, and she needs to get away. Persuaded by her dad, she decides to attend a remote Christian summer camp to work as a counsellor for the summer. She meets a group of girls who exhibit a confidence and power she is impossibly drawn to.
The wonderful thing about Camp is that its story and themes can be taken in a multitude of ways, thanks to how dreamy and nightmare-like Fast makes her film. What stays true is the central theme of grief. Emily was already struggling with her grief over what happened when she was 16, so to compound that with a fresh and equally traumatic tragedy, rightfully devastates her.
So here she is at this camp as a leader, trying to battle her own demons, far from everyone she knows, and she is having the hardest time of it. But is what we are seeing her journey to finding forgiveness within herself, or is it something else? That subliminal, almost impressionistic tone that Fast sets leaves us guessing, but instead of trying to work out what she is trying to tell us, what we should actually be doing is simply absorbing it all. Letting everything we see and hear on the screen seep into our minds and allow that to form its own idea. It is rather marvellous and open in that way, and a point that shows how much of a talent Avalon Fast really is.
As the film progresses, we discover that each of Emily’s fellow camp counsellors has their own secret. Their nightly ceremonies may be an attempt to help them move on with their lives by taking the light from others to feed themselves, so that they can finally feel positive about themselves.
This is where the splendid witchiness comes into play, and damn if it doesn’t just captivate you—moving along glacially, leaving you to just keep watching. We also witness the power of women who work and uplift one another, even if that togetherness is of an eventual destructive nature to anyone and everyone around them.
Zola Grimmer delivers a vulnerable performance as Emily, with her trauma portrayed in a naturalistic manner, that it is hard not to feel for Emily when she becomes overwhelmed, the more Camp continues. Her performance is aided by some splendid performances from the rest of her new group, Rosie (Cherry Moore), Nev (Lea Rose Sebastianis), Hope (Ella Reece) and especially from Alice Wordsworth’s Clara. They all come across as a group of young women who are navigating their way through their own damaged lives and have found this little haven together.
Camp delicately enchants you in a way that few features can, from the direction to the sublime cinematography by Eily Sprungman. You are brought in immediately with a film that dips its toes between dreamlike and an unrelenting nightmare. Asking moral and theological questions regarding healing from trauma, Camp becomes an unmissable film to experience.
★★★★
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