Directed by: Harry Bradbeer
Starring: Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter, Sam Claflin, Fiona Shaw, Louis Partridge.
Enola Holmes is not simply a gender-switching take on the famous detective. Anchored by a spirited performance by Millie Bobby Brown in the title role, Enola Holmes stands on its own as a detective story and an examination into a period when England, and the world, were reluctant to allow greater freedoms to women. In Victorian England, women were expected to act properly, not make a fuss, and obey their husbands. Vote? Ha. The newspapers of the day debate whether women should be allowed to show their ankles in public. They are a long way off from suffrage, which is at the center of debate in the House of Lords.
Enola (alone spelled backwards) is raised by an anagram-loving mother in the English countryside.
Enola's more famous brothers Sherlock (Cavill) and Mycroft (Claflin) have forged their own fame and fortune. Enola's mother (Bonham-Carter) urges her daughter not to be beholden to the whims of men, but to make her own way. Mom has a few secrets, such as her membership in a secret women's group which keeps Enola out of meetings, and on the morning of Enola's sixteenth birthday, she disappears. Enola discovers a few clues hidden in anagrams and houseplants. She asks her brothers to come home to help find her, and they embarrassingly walk by her at the train station because they forget what she looks like.
Enola, after discovering a few clues and a wad of money, lights out for London to find her mother. On the train, she encounters the teenage Viscount Lord Tewkesberry, Marquess of Basilwether (there's a mouthful for ya) stowing away in her compartment. Played by Louis Partridge, he is on the lam from his family and for reasons which may be related to Enola's mother's disappearance. By helping the viscount, she may be helping to find her mother as well. Plus, she likes him, and not just in a friend zone kind of way.
I suppose you can't have any story even related to Sherlock Holmes without hearing the phrase, "the game is afoot," and Enola Holmes tells its story with quick cuts and energy similar to Guy Ritchie's take on the legendary sleuth. Brown breaks the fourth wall often, either with dialogue or a quick glance or look, and it can't be coincidental the movie is directed by Harry Bradbeer, who directed Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag with the same point of view. Enola Holmes starts with heavy reliance on this narrative structure, but soon settles into a traditional storytelling mode, which is fine by me.
If Enola Holmes relied solely on its mystery, it would be a slight, cute movie with little else going for it except costume designs and set decorations which capture a hustling late-nineteenth century London. But, when Mycroft, who has made Enola his ward upon their mother's disappearance, tracks Enola down and tosses her into a finishing school, we despair at seeing society attempting to squash Enola's individuality and spirit. When she tells Mycroft she does not want a husband, Mycroft coldly replies, "this is another thing we are going to have educated out of you," we cringe, because the last thing we want is for Enola to be like everyone else. Mycroft isn't necessarily a villain, but a product of a male-dominated British culture terrified of change. Sherlock, even with his superior powers of deduction and reason, seems baffled by anything not related to solving mysteries. However, he starts to gain at least some insight into the human condition when dealing with Enola.
I'm sure there will be an Enola Holmes sequel in our future, and it will be welcomed, as long as Enola doesn't morph into a female Sherlock Holmes and is allowed to continue on her own path.
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