‘Sew Torn’ Review – An Inventive Crime Thriller with a Whimsical Sense of Humor

A struggling seamstress comes upon a drug deal gone awry in Sew Torn, the feature debut by writer-director Freddy Macdonald, kickstarting a narrative structure that borrows liberally from Tom Tykwer’s propulsive Run Lola Run. The seamstress weighs her options, opening up three different story paths and outcomes. Macdonald nestles Run Lola Run’s loop-like structure inside a cozy crime thriller, the type that’s more intimate and self-contained in scale and comes heavily armed with a sense of whimsy. That it’s all stitched together by an almost preternaturally gifted seamstress makes for a visually arresting and charming debut, if a bit subdued.

“Choices, choices, choices,” Sew Torn‘s seamstress Barbara (Eve Connolly) says in the opening voiceover narration. She has no idea that she’s distilled the plot so simply; the events that follow will lay daunting choices at her feet, though she doesn’t know it yet. Barbara is a soft-spoken protagonist, one struggling to maintain her mother’s shop in a quaint Swiss village despite her uncanny way with thread. A bad run-in with a customer, one particularly nasty bridezilla (Caroline Goodall),  prompts a return trip that causes Barbara to come upon a crime scene in progress on the road that confronts her with the choice to run away, call the police, or commit the perfect crime. Each choice gets played out to its fullest, leading to various brushes with death, violence, and a dazzling level of threadwork.

The heightened sense of reality, pervading charm, and inventive use of Barbara’s seamstress talents in a violent crime thriller go far in Macdonald’s feature debut. There’s an off-kilter quality to the setting, which is distinctly Swiss despite an English-speaking cast. While the filmmaker makes full use of his three-chapter structure, it’s often the almost Rube Goldberg levels of thread weaving that Barbara employs that upstages it. There’s magic in the way that Barbara, a mostly interior character, springs to life and uses her whole body as she spins intricate webs of thread to help her trap or evade foe. It also provides a visually engaging contrast; Barbara feels more suited to “Pushing Daisies” than the grittier crime thriller she finds herself in.

Connolly makes deft work of Barbara’s physicality, building out her character through movement and facial expressions. She also makes easy work of earning rooting interest for her meek character, even if Barbara is a more guarded, internal character. Barbara holds her emotions and thoughts in, for the most part, forcing everyone around her, including the viewer, to fill in the blanks from context clues or draw their own conclusions. It leads to no shortage of darkly funny scenes and encounters with a fantastic supporting cast, from a reluctant criminal (Calum Worthy) to the intense violent crime boss (John Lynch), but it also makes it much trickier to emotionally connect in an otherwise deeply charming story.

What surprises most of all, though, is the way that Macdonald stylishly employs the three-choice narrative structure to drive home a darker theme. Almost like a Butterfly Effect, each choice presents a noticeably different series of events and obstacles. Yet they all circle back to the same thematic conclusion that all but shatters the illusion of free will. Barbara can spin an incredible web with her spools of colorful yarn, each a reflection of a different mood or choice, but not even her incredible talent can break her free from the increasingly binding limitations each path and decision creates.

Sew Torn succeeds thematically, but it doesn’t necessarily yield a satisfying end for the young seamstress who earned it. There’s a dizzying display of innovation and style on display in Macdonald’s funny, violent, and genre-influenced cozy crime caper. But its emotional flatness, despite the effective humor and charm, only further reminds of Twyker’s frenetic, exhilarating Run Lola Run that heavily inspired it.

Sew Torn releases in theaters on May 9.

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