Review: ‘Level 16’ levels up on machismo-bound dystopia

“I had had no communication by letter or message with the outer world: school-rules, school-duties, school-habits and notions, and voices, and faces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies: such was what I knew of existence,” English novelist Charlotte Brontë penned through the eyes of the titular character in her second novel, 1847’s Jane Eyre. A classic tale dissecting morality and themes of class, sexuality, femininity and religion, the story also deals greatly with systemic oppression and trauma. In the aforementioned passage, Jane Eyre bemoans early instruction at Lowood Institution, halls savagely-embroiled in strict discipline for orphaned girls.

Such a rigid backbone is extracted for Canadian screenwriter and director Danishka Estherhazy’s terribly-wicked, bizarrely-sterile world of Vestalis Academy. “A clean girl embraces obedience,” the voice of matriarch Miss Brixil (played to stunningly-detached, cold effect by The Vampire Diaries‘ Sara Canning) pricks through the television screen in sharp, pervasive waves. In staging what appears, at first glimpse, to be a caste system for womanhood, Level 16 is a ferociously-carnivorous and altogether troubling reflection of today’s society. The two-hour affair, spliced with stunning blue and green hues in angular patterns, shifts through femininity and youth as a wide-spread commodity, particularly within the rising beauty augmentation industry. “It’s…a cautionary tale about what could happen in a society where the rich can exploit a vulnerable underclass ⏤ what can happen when human life is undervalued and when luxury, perfection and glamour are pursued without restraint,” Estherhazy says about the piece, which also exposes complicity within the greater plea for equality.

Katie Douglas (Mary Kills People) plays pivotal character Vivien, who begins her journey as the perfect pupil, always clean, always obedient, and Celina Martin (Public Schooled) offers up a grounded, compassionate counterbalance in Sophia, a fearful figure that’s both haunted by her past and freed from it. Peter Outerbridge (The Expanse) serves as the academy’s founder and onsite doctor (Dr. Miro), and his devilish avarice could very well be his ultimate undoing. Despite cracks beginning to unfurl her psyche, Canning’s Miss Brixil remains a truly bewitching and tragic implement for the patriarchy. From Miro’s domineering heartlessness to the corporation’s stranglehold over their very way of life, yet another layer to Brixil’s own inescapably-wretched fate, the story immerses itself in the complexities of corruption and exploitation of women. In coloring inside such an emotionally-raw framework, Estherhazy also spotlights the competitive nature of budding womanhood and women supporting one another, while allowing the audience to uncover rich layers of pain, identity and hope.

Level 16, which was first written more than a decade ago, is as a premonition in Alice’s looking glass. It deceivingly displays what the onlooker would desire to see, know, feel but it’s all a mirage, a phantom for a deadly destiny that we all must confront and dismantle if we really want to ignite any real, significant change in the world.

Level 16 is playing now in select theatres across Canada.

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