“There is just as much humanity, nuance, intelligence, and complication in the experience of a teenage girl as there is in anyone else,” Bianco says. Stories about rape, and particularly stories about young women who experience sexual violence, are often pegged as trauma films. She bristles at that label.
“I’m always hesitant to talk about the gender and politics side of the film, even though those things are really important to me. The minute you tell people that the film tells a story about a teenage girl, people either want to reduce it to ‘puff’ or ‘issues,’” she explains. In other words, something people feel burdened to see and talk about because of its topical urgency, without registering its artistic merits.
Rhianne Baretto on set with director Pippa Bianco.
SABRINA LANTOS/HBOIt’s true that Share requires a certain willingness to sit with troubling, uncomfortable subject matter. At the same time, the characters and the trajectory challenge expectations of the genre, in part by focusing on minutiae: Mandy’s interactions with her parents, coach, and teammates, attempts to be “normal” and engage with her social life, shooting hoops, the bruise slowly healing on her back.
Rhianne Baretto, the 22-year-old Brit who plays Mandy, describes it as a process of the teenager figuring out what she wants to do, what justice looks like for her, and finding the strength to pursue that choice. Through her character’s eyes, the audience is invited to consider that maybe the “right” way forward fails to give her closure. Just as resonantly, Baretto feels that the film deconstructs fraught topics like consent and culpability, while also recognizing that, even in instances of clear right and wrong, there is no black and white. “No one is completely a villain. Everyone is making decisions day to day,” she says.
For Bianco, teasing out those distinctions and revealing the commotion roiling beneath what, on the surface, looks like passivity was the point. Early on in the filmmaking process, she remembers getting the note that her lead character wasn’t “activated” enough: Films are about people making choices—that’s what pushes a plot forward.
“But, to me, there are a lot of choices that we choose to ignore,” Bianco explains. “The choice not to say something. The choice to wait. The choice to ask for privacy. There are millions of choices, all of which are active. Just to get out of bed every day—I think that’s a heroic choice.”
Elizabeth Kiefer is a New York-based writer and editor.
