Written and directed by Lauren Hadaway
Starring Isabelle Fuhrman, Dilone, Jonathan Cherry, Kate Drummond, Amy Forsyth
Runtime: 1 hour 24 minutes
Rated R
In theaters and on demand December 17

by Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

Ten thousand hours. That’s how long you have to practice something to become an expert. 10,000 hours. Let’s say you dedicate 60 hours a week to one thing. If you did that one thing consistently for a year, you’re only 1/3 the way there. And then, OK, you’re an expert, but are you the best? Probably not. College student Alex Dall (Isabelle Fuhrman, Orphan) knows this. But she doesn’t care. Her coach (Jonathan Cherry) reminds her of the 10,000 hour rule as she sweats and faints on the row machines, but it doesn’t register with her.

The Novice is about how striving for perfectionism in sports can morph into body horror and self-abuse. The feature length debut from Lauren Hadaway, who was also a rower in college, is sympathetic toward Alex, but also shows what a manipulator she is. She flirts with her T.A., Dani (Dilone), into giving her test answers. She pleads with Dani, “please, physics is my worst subject.” Dani replies, “Isn’t it your major?” Alex coasts through her classes with a laser-sharp focus on rowing. Training. Beating her best time. Beating the best time. She fervently scribbles her stats in a notebook. This is a rare type of film about an athlete struggling for perfection, because Alex’s coaches are very reasonable. This isn’t Whiplash, or Black Swan, although it certainly borrows from the latter. Alex’s coaches insist that she listen to her body, that she prioritize her studies. It’s called student athlete, after all.

The Novice belongs to Fuhrman, so excellent and menacing in Orphan when she was just 12 years old. Now in her early 20s, Fuhrman is a dead ringer for a young Margot Kidder, with her dark hair, thin lips, and piercing eyes. She gives Alex more humanity than the script does. There’s something missing here. Hadaway keeps Alex at arm’s length. We don’t really know who she is, where she comes from, or are given so much as a crumb of explanation as to why she is the way she is. Or who she is. For such a specific sport like rowing, I had suspected, and confirmed, that this was a story someone who was a rower wanted to tell. I don’t think someone would want to tell this story and then study the mechanics of rowing (for example, the sequence they follow, in terms of muscle activation, is arms-body-legs, legs-body-arms). The character is inaccessible. Are there things about her that might resonate with people who have pushed their bodies to the limit with extreme sports training? Maybe, but how many of us would that be, really? We need something to grasp onto so that Alex feels like she’s rooted in reality. The details about her that we’re given – she’s a perfectionist, she’s queer, she harms herself – are not enough. 

Hadaway makes some interesting choices, like using older music, such as Brenda Lee and Connie Francis, during slow motion montage scenes. It makes all of the extreme training, full of sweat, blood, and breath, feel like a dance. We also see how Alex’s physical and mental state deteriorates through details like how cracked her phone is, how worn her face looks. Earlier scenes relish more use of color than the later ones. By the end, we’re only experiencing Alex’s world in blacks and grays. She rows at night, she cuts herself in a dimly lit bathroom. The Novice shows capable style and filmmaking, and is a star turn for its lead, but needs its story and its character more rooted in the earth to resonate.