IDA

A grieving young woman begins a friendship with an older woman, who seems to have sinister secrets.

Following the tragic and sudden death of her mother, Alice (Colarusso), a passionate photographer, meets a middle-aged woman named Ida (Cornette) after the former delivers a lost letter to her home. Ida has also suffered loss and the two of them warm up towards each other and end up forming a bond. They spend time together, enjoy themselves, share their emotional wounds and appear to have made a great friend in each other. Then Alice discovers that Ida has a disturbing side and she quickly cuts her ties with her. This infuriates Ida and she proceeds to stalk Alice and threaten her.

This dark feature from Belgium follows a concept that is common: a person meets a seemingly friendly stranger, who turns out to have bad intentions. The narrative begins as a drama about loss, grief and friendship and then it turns into a stalker psychological thriller. Appoximately the first half is about Alice trying to recover from her mother's passing and the other half is about Ida's wrath. Most of the story takes place inside Ida's isolated house in the countryside and things get quite tense as Ida goes after Alice and lead to nail-biting and life-threatening situations. The pace is a bit slow, which is not a bad thing as it helps in generating drama and suspense.

Colarusso is emotional as a quiet person who has just lost her mother and is looking for a way to deal with her loss and initially she seems to have achieved that when she meets Ida. Cornette plays the most complex character in the film and she does so very convincingly. Ida has a lot of things in common with Alice, as Ida is also dealing with loss, which makes her a perfect shoulder to cry on for Alice. Later, as Alice attempts to erase her from her life, Ida reveals herself to be a disturbed and aggressive individual and it is her true colours that dominate the second half of the movie.

Gotto's cinematography provides a downbeat feeling and there are some creative lighting techniques. The filmmakers make effective use of slow motion and there are times where the image is out of focus, which has interesting effects.

Regarding the soundtrack, Morgan De Carvalho makes a great contribution with the sinister, sentimental and dramatic music and there is also a variety of songs.

This film explores loss, grief, frienship, obsession and mental health. It is a dark, tense and dramatic story about an unlikely friendship by two individuals who are united by grief and it turns into a nightmare. The performances by the two leads are strong , the plot is intriguing and the suspense will keep the viewer engaged until the end.