is several things at once: 1.) a horror film; 2.) a prequel; 3.) a claustrophobic character sketch of two women percolating in a pressure-cooker setting.
Ruth is a god-fearing woman trying to run her farm, care for her infirm husband , keep her daydreaming daughter Pearl grounded and it’s a struggle: the farm is an uphill climb of backbreaking chores, the husband an endless cycle of cleaning and feeding, cleaning and feeding. Pearl is a struggle of a different kind: she’s perfectly healthy — perhaps too healthy — and has notions of someday leaving the farm with her husband Howard or leaving the farm to become a dancer.
As Pearl spreads tentative wings and explores that outer world in earnest, meeting a movie projectionist in the big city on the sly, agreeing to accompany her sister-in-law Mitsy to a dance audition , Ruth responds with more panic than anger. She sees things, she tells Pearl; she knows more than her daughter thinks she knows — and as Ruth says this the words sound less like a warning and more like an admission.
Makes perverse sense: Sirk’s camera glides warily through the garish-colored sets of his films and recognized the artificiality of 1950s society; his protagonists attempt to defy this artificiality. West’s glides through Pearl’s farmhouse and recognizes in turn the artificiality of her family life; family and acquaintances walk into that artificiality at their peril.