Look Away

LOOK AWAY is the story of Maria, a rejected teenage girl who finds solace in her own mysteriously autonomous mirror image from the torments of high-school and her alienating parents. Through the looking glass, she finds a friend who listens, encourages and guides her. Her reflection knows all her secret desires and darkest dreams. After all, they are one and the same. With the help of her secret "twin," Maria slowly gains confidence and finds her place as a young woman. But at the winter prom, it all blows up in her face. Maria becomes, yet again, the school's laughing stock. Humiliated and lost, she places herself in the hands of her reflection, and trades places with her. When the darker twin takes over, repressed sexuality and ferocious violence erupt with an intoxicatingly dangerous sense of freedom. The reflection embarks on a mysterious quest for revenge against all who have wronged her. It is only when the reflection's dark side almost spins out of control that the film's real question gnaws its way to the foreground: Is the reflection real or is Maria slowly losing her mind? When Maria talks to her "twin," is she actually talking to herself? LOOK AWAY's enigma is the core of its power. This disconcerting duality exists within us all. We desire what we fear. Could it be that we fear violence because we recognize it within ourselves? Do we fear the dark stranger or do we fear it is not a stranger at all? Maybe the reason we find it hard to face ourselves in the mirror is because, in our reflection, we see our own darkness - that part we fear to look at yet secretly know to be there.