As winter encroaches on a small New York farmstead, the family therein prepares for, what will be, the hardest winter of their lives.  Abigail (Katherine Waterson) and her husband Dyer (Casey Affleck), through the trials of death and illness, find their marriage is under more strain with each passing day.  Abigail’s only relief in life is her friendship with her neighboring wife, Tallie (Vanessa Kirby).  As their friendship blossoms into a clandestine relationship, their husbands (the other, Christopher Abbott) become jealous and suspicious of the countless hours their wives are spending together. 

The World to Come, released by Bleecker Street, is a tender romantic period drama directed by Mona Fastvold.  Her camera is ever-peering yet respectful of the two women as they explore and embrace their feelings towards each other.  The passion is there and the chemistry between Waterson and Kirby is undeniable as Fastvold allows us to witness their coming together.  The brief moments of passion we are allowed to witness are pure and euphoric and not played lightly nor scandalously.  The gravity of the situation – two women in a relationship together in 1856 – weighs heavy on the lovers even in their moments of private bliss together and fits well with the overall solemn tone of the film. 

Solemn is not the best adjective for a romance to strive for, and while the script is carefully and meticulously written, Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard’s script is, unfortunately, overwritten.  It relies heavily on voice-over from Abigail’s diary, and while it is all very flowery language like reading straight from the pages of a romance novel, it is used as a crutch and almost all the forward momentum in the 98-minute narrative is told to us in these sequences.  It is still a valid assessment, without falling into the trap of armchair screenwriting, to say that the four leads are also very thinly crafted in their characterization because they are given so little to do on screen outside of the scope of Abigail’s recitations.  Thankfully, Fastvold adds a female view to the film from her director’s chair, but the script could have greatly been improved with the addition of the female voice, too.  Simply put, the women are entirely subservient witnesses to the men, and to make matters worse, the men are boring and flat.  This lack of character work makes the third act even more jarring, especially given the sudden change of heart from one of the husbands which does not line up with what little we know about how they think and operate.   

The film does look beautiful even through its chilly and muddy exteriors, and while the language is pleasant on the ears, the film struggles under the weight of its own melodramatic tone.  The fleeting moments Abigail and Tallie share together are so far apart that it is an emotionally draining experience and the payoffs are not large enough to leave us feeling cathartic.  Further, because of the overwhelming gloom, there are no true happy moments to reflect back on such as the fire on the beach in Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) or the trip to Bergamo in Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name (2017).  Without these moments, the film is more of a chore than anything and it does not give us a real foundation for their relationship.  Simply put, the film does not put in the work to earn its tragedy. 

The World to Come is, unfortunately, a misfire on almost all fronts.  While Waterson and Kirby do their best with the material and do achieve a few moments of brilliance, there is simply not enough there to become fully invested in their story.  The script suffers structurally and poses an impossible challenge to the actors on bringing these one-dimensional characters to life.  The poetry and the visuals are not enough to support this inkling of an idea that failed to be expanded on in an interesting or impactful way and results in a film that is immediately forgettable by the time the credits have finished.