At first this movie disconcerts, as it depicts the blurred reality of the heroine: dreams and awake moments flowing together, laced with nightmares and buried memories. The events follow a dreamer's logic: out of sequence situations, surroundings changing suddenly, people appearing and vanishing from one place to another, bits repeating, strange and surreal conversations... once it is understood, however, one appreciates how deftly this is conveyed, alternating between troubling imagery and touching instants. Wonderland, indeed.

Dark truths lies in the heroine's subconscious and cause her nightmares; yet, strikingly, the story never stoops to voyeurism. Elsewhere, it would be a straightforward and sordid affair, laid out for cheap shock value - here, it is handled with empathy and delicacy. Instead of revelling in its most controversial elements, the movie employs them as vehicles for further characterisation. From a disturbing tragedy, it achieves actual beauty.

The last point I would laud most; and I will strive to remember how moved, how inspired I was left by the end, both as the audience and a potential creator, for it is far from easy to elevate a story like so.

A few flaws have to be mentioned, though.

In order to replicate the heroine's dreamlike state, the movie sacrifices her agency and emotivity in a way that slightly hampers our connection to her. It also has her - and the handful of secondary characters, such as her aunt - meander a little too much, especially in the lengthy introduction before she finally arrives to Wonderland. I believe giving her a clearer goal, as well as stronger emotions, wouldn't have detracted too much from the narrative and could have lent a needed punch to some scenes.

Moreover, I found the secondary characters clumsily grafted to plot: the aunt is moving in her worry, yet ultimately superfluous to the heroine's journey. Similarly, the individuals involved in the backstory appear so late, they aren't as fleshed out as they could - and should - be. An unifying thread misses still: those characters, as well as the ones featuring in the introduction, fail in neatly wrapping together all of the movie's layers.

These aspects prevent it from being a complete success in my eyes, but not from being a very interesting discovery.