Ethan Hawke's latest directorial work is the biopic "Wildcat", where he takes a fresh approach and tries to merge the storyline of Flannery O’Connor's life with the narratives from her work. The film, co-written by Hawke and Shelby Gaines, envisages the characters from O’Connor's pieces emerging in her real life. This innovative structure, a departure from conventional biopics, unfortunately creates more confusion than interest.
An impressive performance has been given by Maya Hawke, Ethan's daughter, who takes the central role. However, the fantasy interludes embedded within the film overshadow her performance by taking on a theatrical tone, resulting in disconnect between O’Connor's real-life chronicles and these fantastical segments.
The setting for this story is brought to life with Hawke's detail-oriented production design, spotlighting both O'Connor's secluded life in rural Georgia and her urban life in 1950s New York City. Yet the narrative wavers between segments that audiences may find interesting or less so.
Despite the inconsistency, Maya Hawke's commendable performance and her palpable chemistry with her father offer a promising glimpse of her future acting career. However, the experiment of intertwining real-life storylines with flights of fantasy in the narrative is met with mixed reactions.
