TIFF25 REVIEW: Steal Away [20XX]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 113 minutes
Studio: Elevation Pictures
Director(s): Clement Virgo
Writer(s): Tamara Faith Berger and Clement Virgo / Karolyn Smardz Frost (inspired by book Steal Away Home)

Work or the garden.

Set in an unknown place under the watchful eye of a domineering militarized force simultaneously calling to mind slave catchers in the American South, Nazi soldiers during World War II, and ICE disappearing immigrants in today’s United States, Clement Virgo’s Steal Away holds an intriguing ambiguity as to the identity of debutante and refugee. The obvious assumption is for Fanny (Angourie Rice) to be the former and Cécile (Mallori Johnson) the latter because that’s how history has handled race for millennia. But the lavishly dressed Cécile riding through a bustling Black market community makes us think otherwise.

The only white person we see during this entire opening journey is Fanny peering out the window of a giant house. So, when Cécile and her mother are met by Black men and women welcoming them and taking their luggage, it’s not difficult to imagine they’ve just come home and the young woman upstairs is their ward. Only when Florence (Lauren Lee Smith) comes walking out the front door to greet them do we realize our original assumption was correct. All those Black characters are servants. Cécile and her mother will start working too. But it’s a symbiotic dynamic because Florence offers them citizenship papers in return.

This realization had me wondering why Virgo and Tamara Faith Berger didn’t just fully adapt Karolyn Smardz Frost’s non-fiction book Steal Away Home instead of simply using it as inspiration. Because it’s one thing to use reality to shape a fairy tale that delivers something beyond its source material. It’s another to just give us the exact same thing. Sure, there are differences insofar as these Black characters not being actual slaves, but do they have autonomy? Yes, the soldiers abduct illegal immigrants rather than escaped property, but is the inclusion of one Eastern European necessary when the act itself has inherent global resonance?

I’d argue “No” to both points and, as a result, kept waiting for something more to occur. That presumption is ultimately on me, but I don’t think the film’s desire to stay so grounded that its “alternate universe” take proves little more than a superficial filter is wholly innocent. Strip away the excess and this is just an Underground Railroad tale of freedom from oppression. So, its value will therefore rest with how captivated you are by the relationship of its two leads. One that’s steeped in jealousy because neither Cécile nor Fanny truly know what’s going on. Once they do, however, that sin melts away to expose adoration.

I did find it compelling because Virgo and Rice never allow Fanny’s actions to become rooted in malice. She likes Cécile’s clothes and hair. She lusts after Cécile’s boyfriend Rufus (Idrissa Sanogo). She yearns to be seen as a figure of desire rather than just another spoiled kid being laughed at by her mother’s guests. Watching the way Florence interacts with Cécile and her doctor’s Black baby earns some jealousy, but it’s not because Fanny wants to replace the new arrival. It’s because she wishes to be her equal. Will Cécile see it that way from the outside? No. History all but guarantees the opposite. Fanny must earn her trust.

That’s the subplot that kept me engaged when the bigger picture surrounding Florence’s talk about “eggs being a woman’s lifeblood” comes into obvious focus. Every detail concerning the specific way in which this plantation operates on the backs of immigrant bodies is out in the open from the moment Cécile sees a cork board of all the young foreigners who slept in her room previously. None of those revelations carry the weight the filmmakers surely hope, but Cécile and Fanny finally comprehending them does. Because the latter understands that the former’s pain is shared. If it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone.

It’s the same lesson our current moment is learning under Donald Trump’s regime. The lesson we should have learned eighty years ago when Pastor Martin Niemöller wrote “First They Came”. There must be a line that morality won’t allow you to cross. There must be a person to enforce it even when they were themselves bred to help erase it. That’s who Fanny is here. She’s a self-fulfilling prophecy considering her compassion for women like Cécile was born from her mother constantly exposing her to them. The need to humanize these immigrants to maintain respectability on the surface ensures Fanny won’t just turn away.

Johnson and Rice effectively toe that line as their characters let their own presumptions dictate initial actions until their true selves are laid bare. The world around them is also beautifully rendered in its out-of-time and out-of-place aesthetic (with a bit of fantasy as it relates to a premonition). But I won’t lie and say I wasn’t often confused by that subterfuge not having any payoff. I kept thinking I was missing something, but there wasn’t anything to miss. Steal Away is merely a well-told story of oppression in an unnecessarily convoluted package. Some will love it, some will hate it, and, those like me, will simply move along.