“Toxic” Review: Beauty Dreams and Harsh Realities (MUBI)

Life in a small Lithuanian town can look — and feel — relentlessly bleak. That’s the first impression one gets watching Toxic, the debut feature by Saulė Bliuvaitė, which won the Golden Leopard for Best Film at the Locarno Film Festival. The surroundings — part industrial wasteland, part suburban purgatory — evoke an arthouse version of The Simpsons’ Springfield: smokestacks, possible chemical residue, and an ominous, apocalyptic grayness. In the middle of it all, teenage girls try to survive — and if possible, escape.

Bliuvaitė combines two contrasting formal strategies. On one hand, Toxic has the feel of raw, stripped-down realism: a quiet chronicle of two girls navigating a hostile environment. But at the same time, its visual language often draws attention to itself — through odd camera angles, strangely elongated takes, jarring cuts, or tableaux that feel like disconnected still lifes. The tension between these modes creates a fractured narrative rhythm that initially feels distracting but ultimately becomes part of the film’s texture. Crucially, these stylistic choices never distance us from the characters or diminish their emotional stakes.

At its core, Toxic is the story of two teenage girls who hope to leave town by enrolling in a so-called “modeling school” — essentially a scam run by a woman who promises future stardom in “Paris or Tokyo” in exchange for large sums of money. She also demands they be extremely thin, pushing them toward dangerous extremes.

Marija (Vesta Matulytė) is the new girl in town, living with her grandmother and facing bullying at school, partly due to a limp. Her only real connection comes through Kristina (Ieva Rupeikaitė), a local girl who’s more confident but also something of an outsider. They’re opposites — Marija tall and withdrawn, Kristina outgoing and impulsive — but their bond is immediate and tender. Together, they face the competitive pressures of the modeling world, surrounded by girls who better fit conventional standards of beauty.

Desperate to “make it,” the two girls begin to starve themselves (at one point, they chew cotton to suppress hunger) and experiment with their bodies in unsettling ways. Marija’s limp and financial constraints make her path even harder. But refreshingly, Toxic doesn’t frame the other aspiring models as enemies. There’s no artificial tension or mean-girl hierarchy; each girl is simply trying to survive her own reality.

Rather than focus on the cruel inner workings of the modeling scam, the film follows the girls through everyday life: spending time with local kids, attending parties, interacting with family. The dream of escape is always present, but reality — the dull ache of their surroundings — remains the film’s grounding force.

Visually bold and at times playfully self-aware, Toxic flirts with a certain formal excess. But Bliuvaitė avoids the kind of detached, misanthropic tone favored by directors like Yorgos Lanthimos or Ulrich Seidl. She never mocks her characters or treats them as grotesque. If there’s a villain here, it’s the socioeconomic conditions that drive these girls to seek salvation in a hollow dream. The school, with its cold director and empty promises, simply reflects a larger system that monetizes desperation.

Thanks to two remarkable performances and Bliuvaitė’s empathetic storytelling, Toxic becomes less about cruelty or ambition and more about friendship, resilience, and the small flashes of connection that help people survive. We know the girls are on the wrong path — modeling won’t fix their lives — but we also understand their need to believe in something. Maybe the path out doesn’t lead to Paris or Tokyo. But perhaps it will teach them how to navigate the world with a little more armor.