SXSW ’26: “The Snake” Has Heart in its Bite
This review was originally posted on Film Obsessive.
We’ve all known our fair share of twenty-somethings who just cannot seem to get their act together. They go from one bad partner to another, can’t keep a job, and always seem to be involved in some sort of shenanigans. It’s fun for a while in your twenties, to either be that person or to be around them. As twenties turn to thirties turn to forties, what does it look like when that ungovernable twenty-something goes over the hill? Written by and starring Susan Kent, with Jenna MacMillan directing, the SXSW-premiering The Snake is a film about a woman who hasn’t grown up and the straw that breaks the camel’s back and finally gets her to change her ways.
The audience first meets Jamie (Kent) in the back seat of a cop car. She just spent the night in a drunk tank and is now lamenting her life to the cop in the front seat. The audience immediately gets the impression that this is probably just another Tuesday for Jamie. She makes her way to her ex’s (Dan Petronijevic) van, where she unsuccessfully tries to get him to fully commit to her. The reality is that a guy who goes by Davey Danger and wants to live in a cramped van parked in an alleyway is not a guy who’s going to commit. This sends Jamie to her grandmother’s house where she runs into her mother, Anne (Robin Duke). The house was supposed to go to Jamie in the will, but Anne isn’t having it. This sends Jamie on a tear across town that will take her to hell and back and maybe, just maybe, allow her to grow up.
Credit: Justin Rix
According to CBC, The Snake is the first film from Prince Edward Island, Canada, to be showcased at a major film festival. MacMillan also has reason to believe it’s the first Atlantic Canada-made film to premiere at SXSW. When people think of Canada as a location, they often think of Toronto or Vancouver. Many of your favorite TV shows have been shot in Vancouver over the years, and movies love to pretend that Toronto is New York City. Prince Edward Island, though, is a little ecosystem all its own. Off the coast of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island is home to 182,000 residents. While The Snake certainly isn’t trying to speak for all of them, it does give voice to a lesser-known province. To do so on the stage of a festival like SXSW is such an honor.
It’s undeniable that The Snake is messy. Jamie makes some extremely poor decisions that cause her to be hard to like, but that feels quite purposeful from Kent. Everyone loves to root for an anti-hero when it’s a man. It’s cooled off a little now, but many look at a character like Walter White as someone thrilling to watch, even though he’s actively ruining lives in every episode of Breaking Bad. Jamie is messy, loud, and careless, but she’s still human. She wasn’t raised in a home where compassion and kindness were common. Those are difficult skills to learn as an adult, but, as The Snake shows, not impossible. The film doesn’t ask the audience to forgive Jamie at her lowest, but it does ask the viewer to give her a chance to change her ways. Popular culture isn’t often kind to these types of female characters, yet we’re so ready to root for male characters who do the same or worse. The Snake is about rediscovering one’s own self-worth and unlearning decades of self-hatred. It’s not just about Jamie, but about how our culture sees women who are “ungovernable.”
The tide of The Snake turns when someone reaches out to Jamie without expecting anything in return. She’s so used to people only being nice because they want something from her. When there are no ulterior motives, when it’s kindness in its purest sense, Jamie struggles. It’s a compassion she’s not used to, and to be able to accept that is a struggle all its own. It’s difficult to live without tenderness, but it’s also extraordinarily hard to open yourself up to affection when it’s a foreign concept. The Snake may seem like a rambunctious odyssey across Prince Edward Island, but that skin is quickly shed to reveal something much more emotionally resonant.
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