Enola Holmes 3 review: Millie Bobby Brown’s diffident detective comes-of-Adolescence

Enola Holmes 3 review: Unlike the first two instalments of the Enola Holmes franchise, the third part is not a whodunit. The primary antagonist is revealed within the first hour itself — and it won’t be a rude assumption to make that like the first two parts, it’s a woman. The films, which revolve around ace detective Sherlock Holmes’ younger sister, underline the fact that while girls and women like Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) and her mother Eudoria Holmes (Helena Bonhem Carter) are capable of fighting the crime on their own, it’s also powerful women like the Dowager in part 1 and Mira Troy in part 2 who perpetuate the cycle of patriarchy owing to their own vested interests. Part 3 stresses more on the ‘why’ than the ‘who’, much like the director’s breakthrough show.

Adolescence meets Enola Holmes

Phillip Barantini, who helmed the Emmy Award-winning crime drama Adolescence on Netflix last year, charters unfamiliar territory as he replaces Harry Bradbeer as the director of Enola Holmes 3. Thankfully, he doesn’t dim the sparkle or weigh down the proceedings of the sprightly protagonist with his grim, lofty insights. Instead, he works in tandem with screenwriter Jack Thorne (who wrote Adolescence as well as the Enola Holmes films) to commit his skills completely to the world of the youngest Holmes. But there are flashes where one can see that Barantini works his way in, instead of blindly submitting himself to the mythmaking of the franchise.

Much like Adolescence, Barantini explores the limitations of shutting down one’s emotions and parental control in Enola Holmes 3, despite its pre-social media Victorian-era setting. Enola, who’s been conditioned by her mother to spell her name backwards and acknowledge that she’ll forever remain ‘alone’, is contemplating marriage. No wonder she’s having second thoughts, assuming that dropping her last name would inadvertently rob her of her own individuality. It seems like a less steeper struggle than Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) of Adolescence, but a struggle nonetheless — because she’s just about managed to inch out of the tall shadow of her mighty brother Sherlock. She can’t afford to do that all over again, this time in her husband’s shadow.

The husband, in question, is the greenest of green flags — Tewkesbury (Louis Patridge). He’s a prince who lets his woman wear the shining armour and ride the stallion into the sunset. And he does so not as a favour to womanhood, but just in the capacity of an equal partner who vicariously thrives on his woman’s freedom, autonomy, and authority. A couple of his scenes with Enola demonstrate how far they’ve come from when they first jumped off a moving train as strangers. “Why are you being so nice to me?,” asks Enola after ditching him at the altar. “Because I’m choosing to be,” he says matter-of-factly. In another sequence, they borrow some time off from looking for their missing relatives and go for a swim in the sea instead. Them looking in opposite directions while undressing and blushing — and then helping each other dress down — is the most passionate yet innocent intimate scene in recent memory.

Emotional is political

So, Enola does come-of-age — or should Barantini say come-of-adolescence — when she realizes that unlike her always-on-the-flight mother, confronting her feelings and embracing her emotions is really her superpower. “I feel it’s very understandable and absolutely necessary,” says Enola in a key sequence, responding to her brother’s observation in the first part that her “being emotional is understandable, but not necessary.” Emotions fuel her being — unlike Sherlock, she doesn’t even shy away from expressing pain and disappointment while getting battered during the action sequences.

Also, unlike her brother — and manhood at large — she also knows how and when to keep her emotions in check. When an irate Sherlock threatens to eliminate a persistent evil in order to break the cycle of revenge, she makes him see reason. “You’re being emotional,” she tells him, underlining that contrary to popular perception, it’s the emotions shown and exercised upon by men that have caused all the great wars in history. Going to war is not them being unemotional and merciless, but them being overtly emotional and vengeful. Because vengeance is as much a primal emotion as vulnerability — in fact, a far more lethal one.

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By marrying the personal and the political, Barintini makes Enola Holmes 3 the most resounding and relatable film in the franchise so far. All the signature fun is still there — the horse chases, the riddle work, the breaking of the fourth wall, sardonic barbs by Mrs Holmes, and as cherry on the cake this time, the exotic locales of Malta. But instead of grounding the film in sisterhood or basing it around a real-life feminist movement like the previous parts, Barintini and Thorne make the scope much bigger. It’s not just about one case, but about the British’s historical wrongs across centuries. No wonder then it was a woman who perpetuated arguably the biggest cycle of abuse and patriarchy in history — ’tis I, the queen.

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