PIN CUSHION: The Nightmare Of Bullying

There’s (at least) one in every classroom, in every town, in every country. A person who doesn’t fit in. A person considered weird by all their peers.. A clear target for bullies, who are merciless in their attacks.

Pin Cushion tells the story of two of these unfortunate souls.

Pin Cushion

Iona (Lily Newmark) and her mother Lyn (Joanna Scanlon) are new in town. They do everything together; invent dance routines, solve jigsaw puzzles, they even sleep in the same bed. Although Iona and Lyn’s world is a small one, they are happy together.

Until, that is, Iona starts a new school. She’s an immediate target for a gang of bullies, led by Keeley (Sacha Cordy-Nice). While they eventually let her into their gang, she remains a subject of abuse; the other girls taking advantage of her sexual inexperience and fervent desire to be liked. Though they make her life miserable, Iona pretends to her mum that they are all the best of friends. She doesn’t want to worry her, after all.

Lyn, meanwhile, is having her own difficulties adjusting to the new town. After lending a ladder to her neighbour, she assumes she’s made a new friend, but the neighbour proves as much of a bully as those abusing her daughter. Ejected from a ‘friendship group’ and jeered on the street, Lyn has a terrible time of it. But she doesn’t tell Iona.

Both of them mocked from every corner, it isn’t long before the relationship between mother and daughter starts to suffer. It seems there’s no way to escape their torment. Or is there?

Not Quite Of This Planet

The world of Pin Cushion is an exaggerated one. All the colours are dialled up to eleven. The bullies are cartoonishly cruel. The dialogue has a distinct ‘How do you do, fellow kids?’ flavour. Everything is heightened and strange; it all feels not quite of this planet.

This uncanny valley is a stifling place to be. Writer/director Deborah Haywood has enacted a clear vision with Pin Cushion, and the result is likely different than anything you’ve seen before. It’s a strange mix of kitschy, uber-British twee-ness, and fairy-tale nightmare. The obviously limited budget hampers her vision a little; aesthetically the film looks like something that might show up on the BBC children’s channel, CBBC. Using her limited means, however, Haywood has created something truly distinctive.

Within this off-beat universe, Haywood does conjure up some disturbing moments. She’s aided by a pair of sensitive, brave performances from Joanna Scanlon and Lily Newmark. Scanlon in particular is asked to go to some dark places; Lyn lays in bed and sucks her daughter’s dummy, she laps at a bowl of milk like a cat, she dreams about slicing her back with a hacksaw. It’s a memorable turn, devoid of any vanity.

The problem with Pin Cushion‘s otherworldly atmosphere is that Haywood is dealing with a decidedly earth-bound topic: bullying. Because the dialogue the schoolgirls speak doesn’t sound realistic, because everything is so stylised, it can be hard to connect with Iona and Lyn; hard to see them as real people, and not whimsical fabrications. It doesn’t help that we never learn anything substantive about them, only that they are peculiar. When Pin Cushion relies so much on your sympathy for the unfortunate duo, that’s a real problem.

Shoot What It Feels Like

Yet this hyper-stylisation also yields benefits. It’s as if we are seeing Iona and Lyn’s world through their eyes, rather than objectively. It isn’t that every sentence the schoolgirl bullies speak ends in ‘babe’, and it isn’t that Lyn is literally heckled by every person that she has the misfortune to meet. That’s just what it feels like to them. American photographer David Alan Harvey once said, ‘Don’t shoot what it looks like, shoot what it feels like’. In Pin Cushion, that’s exactly what Deborah Haywood has done.

And it is very effective, especially in regards to the production design. The house that Iona and Lyn share is suffocatingly small; the atmosphere over-bearing. For most of the movie, the walls are painted a lurid mix of forest green and hot pink, with clutter and trinkets littering every corner. A budgie, who Lyn considers a second child, flaps around disconsolately in a little cage, later to meet an unfortunate end. It’s an oppressive space, one anyone in their right mind would want to escape. It’s easy to see why Iona is so embarrassed to bring her ‘friends’ home.

In addition, the exaggerated world of Pin Cushion underlines the relentlessness of the attacks on both mother and daughter. Even when one of them comes across a potential ally, like Iona’s schoolmate Chelsea (Bethany Antonia), they never dare go against the queen bee bullies. The snide looks, the heckles, the cruel jokes, the violence; it’s endless. With no place that feels safe, even their own home, the desperation to escape the misery at any cost is devastatingly understandable.

None of this makes Pin Cushion any easier to watch. The film often feels like wearing an itchy woolly jumper on a warm summer’s day; uncomfortable, claustrophobic, sweaty. Whether Haywood intended it to be quite so stifling is up for debate, but it’s hard to deny the relief when the closing credits start. Even those who love the movie will be unlikely to return to it any time soon.

In Conclusion

The unremitting cruelty at the centre of Pin Cushion makes it a hard watch, and near-impossible to enjoy. The hyper-stylisation, the inhuman-sounding dialogue, and the thinness in the characterisation will turn many audiences off.

For sheer distinctiveness of vision, and for the visceral portrayal of how it feels to be bullied, first time director Deborah Haywood deserves plaudits, as do her two lead actresses. It will be interesting to see what she comes up with next.

Whatever you think of Pin Cushion, you won’t forget it in a hurry.

Have you seen Pin Cushion? What did you think?

Pin Cushion is released in the UK on July 13th, and the US on July 20th. For further release information, click here.