This Ain’t Your Rosemary’s Baby – Alice Lowe’s Prevenge

Starring, written and directed by Alice Lowe, Prevenge at first glance seems like a silly premise: a pregnant woman hears the voice of her unborn child compelling to take revenge on those responsible for her partner’s death.

Prevenge walks a very fine line with its tone. It contains a mixture of utterly pitch-black comedy, combining bathos and pathos to such an effect you’re not sure whether to laugh, scream, or cry. It is gloriously bloody and enormous fun, but still delivers pertinent messages about society’s attitudes towards pregnancy and motherhood.

Early on, Ruth has a prenatal check-up with a midwife who is both over-familiar and patronising. Ruth sits there, stone-faced, as the midwife gleefully tells her, “You have absolutely no control over your mind and body anymore- she does” and touches her bump without asking. Ironically as a mother-to-be she is infantilised; the midwife had not even bothered to read her notes and came in swinging with inappropriate jokes about breasts turning into milk rockets. Then when she realises Ruth has lost her partner, she is cruelly dismissive of her grief, because negativity “is bad for the baby”.

Then we have the rogue’s gallery of Ruth’s targets. They’re an interesting bunch, some sympathetic, others less so.

The second target, DJ Dan, is a “weekend warrior” approaching middle age who runs 70’s Disco nights in a dead pub. Following a hilariously cringeworthy flirting and dancing scene, he takes Ruth back to his place, and by the time you’ve seen him creep on uncomfortable-looking young women at the bar, climb roughly on top of Ruth despite her clear “no” signals, and verbally abuse his elderly mother, you’ll have a hard time feeling sorry for him.

There is also Ella (played by ever-wonderful Kate Dickie), the cutthroat businesswoman who thinks motherhood is unprofessional. She’s all smiles and assurances that oh, she doesn’t think that way, it’s the clients you see, but she is the perfect example of a woman upholding patriarchy. I won’t spoil exactly what happens, but her death is particularly satisfying.

For all its absurdity there’s a deeply sad element to this film as well. We are regularly reminded that Ruth is grieving, isolated, and faced with single motherhood and no sources of support. Even the aforementioned midwife holds the threat of Social Services over her head, cluelessly stating her grief is “affecting her rationality”. It’s a harsh but necessary demonstration of how systems that should be in place to protect our most vulnerable have instead become a bogeyman; at the mention of their name Ruth panics that her baby will be taken away and they’ll “give it to some child-hungry middle-class couple”.

Near the beginning of the film there’s a gag where Ruth settles down in bed to sleep and is immediately disturbed by her neighbours having loud energetic sex. She hears her unborn child gleefully taunting her “you won’t be doing any of that ever again.” It’s funny until it’s repeated later when her loneliness has become apparent and she rests her head on the wall as it shakes, desperate for some adult connection and intimacy.

I have to say, Lowe is known as a brilliant comic actress (if you like her in Prevenge, I recommend you also watch Sightseers), but she has proven herself fantastic as a writer and director as well. Going through her own real pregnancy during filming and production, she has given new life to theme that is tired and often misogynistic in execution.

By Dai Baddley

Twitter: @PrepareToDai