[OVERLOOK 2023 REVIEW:] CLOCK DESCENDS INTO MATERNAL MADNESS
Ella Patel (Dianna Agron) seemingly has it all at the outset of Clock, the feature debut of writer-director Alexis Jacknow, which made its world premiere at the 2023 Overlook Film Festival last week. She’s got a loving husband, an enviable career, and plenty of free time for hobbies, self-care, and sex. But there’s one thing missing in her life, at least according to everyone around her: a baby.
Some of the most stressful scenes in Clock occur at the very beginning when Ella’s childless happiness is interrogated at every turn. In response to learning that Ella doesn’t want kids, one woman forcefully asserts, "Yes you do,” following this up with “What do you do all day?” The idea that a woman’s life is incomplete without children in it looms heavily over the narrative, and we feel a palpable sense of Ella starting to cave under its weight.
Adding to Ella’s stress is her father, Joseph (Saul Rubinek), who piles on the guilt by telling Ella that her ancestors didn’t survive the Holocaust only for the family line to end with her. It’s an unkind argument, but not an unbelievable one, at least to anyone whose parents have tried to twist their hand in the kid department. Agron’s performance sells the relationship between the pair; Ella’s tense resignation is palpable as Joseph launches into what is likely a recurring dinner table speech.
Clock’s invocation of religious guilt and societal pressures is fascinating, but it’s undercut by the revelation that Ella’s apathy toward having children is born, at least in part, out of a deep-seated fear of childbirth. This revelation comes after Ella agrees to an experimental treatment designed to “fix” her seemingly unresponsive biological clock. “The therapy fixes your fears,” Dr. Elizabeth Simmons (Melora Hardin) tells Ella, “and the pheromones fix your desire.” Jacknow’s script does a good job of exploring the complicated, compounding, and sometimes conflicting feelings that some individuals have around pregnancy and parenthood. But by stirring fear into the mix and emphasizing it so strongly, Clock ultimately lessens the impact of its overarching message: that Ella’s lack of desire was perfectly valid. She never needed to be fixed.
This message might have been driven home harder if at least one person in her life had sided with Ella on the issue, providing a contrasting view. The relationship between Ella and her pregnant lesbian friend, Shauna (Grace Porter), feels like a particularly unfortunate missed opportunity for this kind of nuance. After all, the queer community is often at the forefront of advocating for alternative lifestyles. It’s hard to believe that any lesbian would want to force a woman into an unhappy pregnancy to appease heteronormative societal standards.
But Shauna seems surprisingly unwilling to accept Ella’s autonomy in these matters, expressing first quiet frustration, then outright anger with her claim that this doesn’t come naturally to her when “All you have to do is spread your legs to make it happen.” There’s something to be said about the unique challenges lesbians can face when trying to conceive and raise children — especially for queer women of color like Shauna — but as a throwaway line in a straight, white woman’s story, this sentiment feels misguided and devoid of real depth.
And that’s the biggest flaw with Clock’s inner mechanisms: there are a lot of interesting ideas being thrown around, but the hands aren’t moving in the same direction. It’s certainly stylish, with an exceptionally clever color palette and some striking body horror as the treatment drives Ella into a state of maternal madness. Jacknow shows a huge amount of promise as a filmmaker, but this particular bun needed a little longer in the even.
Clock arrives on Hulu on April 28.
