Where the Crawdads Sing

 

Olivia Newman's Where the Crawdads Sing works just well-enough as an elegiac romance that one can (almost) forgive the story's numerous implausibilities and its amateurish handling of the murder mystery that lies at its heart.

Crawdads stars the indefatigable English actress Daisy Edgar-Jones (Under the Banner of Heaven, Normal People) as Kya Clark, a young woman who grew up in the North Carolina marshes with her brutal, alcoholic father (the dependable Garret Dillahunt) after her mother and then her siblings abandon them one-by-one.

When her miserable Pa finally leaves too, the child Kya is left to fend for herself. She harvests mussels and sells them to the saintly Black merchant and his wife (Sterling Macer Jr. and Michael Hyatt, respectively) for provisions. She communes with nature, developing a keen eye for coastal flora and fauna, and growing into a remarkable young woman, apparently without the benefit of education or health care. She hides from social services and is abetted by the merchant and his wife in eluding capture.

One day she meets local good boy Tate (played as an adult by Taylor John Smith), who has been leaving feathers and other gifts for her in the woods. He teaches her to read, as she's never attended school, and encourages her interest in nature. She falls in love with him, only to be abandoned once again when he leaves for college and fails to return as promised.

(The order of the following events is changed a bit from the film's narrative for the sake of clarity.) Kya soon meets local bad boy Chase (Harris Dickson of The King's Man), who enjoys consorting with the Marsh Girl but keeps their relationship hidden from the status conscious townsfolk. Kya, who has become a published author of nature studies, rejects Chase's unwanted sexual advances after learning of his engagement to another young woman and is overheard threatening to kill him if he persists in stalking her.

Chase, as we know from the film's opening, ends up dead, Kya acccused of his murder and the kindly local attorney, played by David Strathairn, comes to her defense.

The case against the Marsh Girl is unbelievably weak, which relinquishes the story of any real element of suspense aside from that about Kya and Tate's inevitable reunion.

Newman has included some lovely scenes of wildife, mostly aquatic fowl, and the voiceovers by a reflective Kya looking back on these events contain some poetic passages, but the film, overall, feels precious and saccharine, despite the ghastly behavior displayed by many of its characters.