By Jim Gilles and Valerie Milano
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 7/19/22 – On Saturday, July 16, at the Outfest LGBTQ+ was a screening of writer-director Rocky Palladino’s Phea (UK, 2022) – a modern take on the classic Orpheus myth. It follows Phea, played by singer-songwriter Sherika Sherard, on a journey to find her lover over the course of one tumultuous day and night in London. The film starts out with Phea singing and playing her guitar – “busking” – on the street near a London U-station. Like Orpheus with his lyre in the Greek legend, Phea is almost always attached to her guitar. She has a female lover Justine (played by Katarína Andrejcová), on whom she dotes. In many ways, Justine is also her muse and the source of inspiration for the lyrics she composes. The film is very much centered around Sherika Sherard, who started out as a street musician in London and was discovered by accident by film director Rocky Palladino. Sherika had no prior training as an actor but it was clear from the beginning that she embodies the character of Phea perfectly as the Orpheus-like figure in the story. The music in Phea consists of songs written and performed by Sherika Sherard, whose amazing voice draws the viewer into the film and her haunting songs.
We first see Phea furiously scribbling the beginnings of possible song lyrics on her notepad, seeking to find the right words. A little later, we see Phea performing in a small club and a thoroughly enraptured Justine sitting in the audience. It would seem that Phea won her heart with her songs. We soon find Phea and Justine together in Phea’s tiny South London apartment where they seem very much in love. However, there is something obviously bothering Justine that she cannot articulate. In summarizing the beginning of the film, the details here need a bit of a spoiler alert.
Phea and Justine come from very different backgrounds – each with a backstory that is fairly mysterious. Phea, whose facial features slightly resemble singer Tracy Chapman, is of Afro-Caribbean descent and Justine seems to be possibly of Eastern European origin. Added to Phea’s relationship with Justine is Phea’s larger concern – that of pursuing a music career and finding a record company that might be interested in recording some of her songs. She gets a lead with a small time recording company helmed by a man named Edwin (Emun Elliott) who asks her to come by his office. Phea does that but grows impatient waiting for another aspiring musician who he is interviewing and rushes off without ever really talking to him.
Back at her apartment, Phea notices that Justine is moody and full of worry. Is there something that Phea has done to upset Justine? Or is it possible that a future in music for Phea might somehow threaten Justine, whose status as an immigrant in the UK seems precarious? Phea is so distracted by Justine’s beauty and her place as a muse that she really does not seem to notice a change in Justine.
True to the Orpheus legend, Justine – like the mythic Eurydice – suddenly disappears one day, without a trace and her cell phone connection no longer working. Phea is at her wit’s end trying to find out what happened to Justine. She asks all the people she knows in the area of South London where she lives but no one seems to have any answers. She runs into some rather seedy characters in her search and finds herself running in a rather-hyper blonde woman (played brilliantly by Lithuanian actress Gabija Siurbyte) who dresses like a sex worker with a definite Eastern European accent. That woman seems to know something about Justine, but she avoids Phea, but keeps popping up anyway. Eventually Phea catches up with her and quite literally pins her down. The blonde woman is a Charon-like figure in this tale – and she seems to have the contacts to the underworld that Phea will soon enter in her search for the missing Justine.
After all other leads seem useless, Phea decides to go to the factory where Justine was supposedly working as an accountant or bookkeeper. When she arrives at the factory in a dismal part of South London, Phea sees the men at a loading dock looking like tough Eastern European thugs who speak with a noticeable accent. Phea asks if Justine is working there and the answer is not satisfactory to Phea. She overhears conversations that lead her to believe that Justine is there but locked up somewhere deep inside the concrete walls of the building. She catches a glimpse of that strange blonde woman again and that is a clue that she has entered a place that is indeed quite sinister.
At this point, the film turns into a thriller when Phea encounters the lead boss Rado (played by Andrew Whipp) who is actually named Uncle and Irish, and his gang of different Eastern European thugs. Apparently all this has to do with secrets about this clandestine business operation being revealed to the police. Now we are quite literally in Hades, the Underworld of Greek legend and the leader Rado presides over his little kingdom. In this dream-like film, there is also a digital clock popping up to remind us of the limited time that Phea has to save Justine from a hopeless fate. The reminder of Palladino’s film plays out the heart of the Orpheus legend and Orpheus’ promise to get Eurydice back in exchange for an agreement about never looking back as he leads her out of the Underworld. Without revealing any spoilers, it is interesting how Palladino handles the third act of his film.
Orpheus and his lyre
At one level, Phea is a thriller set in a world of human trafficking and gangster operations and also tale about an aspiring musician. At any allegorical level, the mythological aspects of Phea’s journey to the Underworld to save Justine shape the larger plot. But it is the amazing performance of Sherika Sherard as Phea that dominates the film and her beautiful performed music on which the soul of the story rests.
At the present time, Sherika does not yet have an album, you can get a taste of her amazing vocals at: https://www.youtube.com/