Was Veronika Decides to Die actually made on this earth? Or did it simply drop from the heavens and land in my letterbox? You’d think the latter given the paucity of information floating around: a film based on a work by famed Brazilian author Paulo Coelho and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar surely deserves a little more coverage than a softly-softly DVD release.

At least it’s now getting a DVD release in an English-speaking country (as far as I can tell, the only version you can get on Amazon comes via Sweden) because while this isn’t the greatest film I’ve ever seen, it’s a long way from terrible, and has been committed to screen with a careful if slightly modest style.

Gellar plays the titular character, a young New York-based corporate jockey who, in the film’s opening scenes, decides to take her own life by overdosing on sleeping pills. Why she does this is never specifically explained, but screenwriters Roberta Hanley and Larry Gross provide a couple of hooks that enable us identify with Veronika’s need to escape the madness of the day-to-day world.

The suicide attempt fails, but Veronika emerges from her coma in a psychiatric hospital, only to be told that her overdose has caused irreparable damage to her heart and she may have only a couple of weeks to live. Isolated in the upstate hospital and under the care of an unorthodox doctor (David Thewlis), Veronika is forced to stare life right in the face and soon finds it’s not just her own tortured soul staring back.

Anybody who has read Paulo Coelho’s books will know he enjoys grafting fables that are appropriate for the modern world. I haven’t read Veronika Decides to Die, but the film very much has a feel typical of the author’s work, and this is both a strength and a weakness. There’s an eerie atmosphere to the film, captured with much skill by Young and cinematographer Seamus Tierney, and it means many of the more interpretative scenes carry a heady atmosphere. But Coelho’s characters often feel like rudimentary representations rather than three-dimensional human beings, and there’s precious little fiddling with that formula in this film.

Everybody In Veronika Decides to Die is talismanic in one sense or another, even Veronika herself, who has an effect on Thewlis’s Dr. Blake, as well as a young schizophrenic patient, played with wild-eyed dedication by Jonathan Tucker. It’s a decision that’s fine in itself, but the characters are given so little in the way of real shading that they often feel like chess pieces being shifted around systematically by the screenwriters.

Thankfully, Young proves herself an actor’s director, and facilitates some strong performances from her talented cast. Thewlis has been continually underrated since making his first real mark in Naked, and was a major win for the filmmakers, anchoring the production with considerable charisma. Tucker, likewise, is an engaging presence, while Melissa Leo and Erika Christensen provide some solid work in the remaining supporting roles. Gellar is not always convincing but certainly serviceable, and seems to settle into the part as Veronika slowly opens to the world. On a side note, it can be a little annoying for kiwi viewers to see one of New Zealand’s finest actresses, Rena Owen – so memorable in Once Were Warriors – reduced to a bit part as a hospital nurse.

Veronika Decides to Die is a modern fable and is best approached as such: there’s nothing particularly groundbreaking or deep here. It’s a film you could easily imagine being played in high school philosophy classes. What’s surprising is the high level of craft on display, and as such this is a worthy little independent feature that deserves a little more love from home entertainment distributors.


I say: There’s nothing life changing here; just a modern fable that could have done with a little more depth, particularly with regards to its sketchbook characterisations.

See it for: The slick technical credits.

Veronika Decides to Die is now available on DVD from Umbrella Entertainment.