Enola Holmes: A fitting role of a super talented actor

There’s much to like about Enola Holmes, but before anything else, let me just say this: The film’s leading lady - Millie Bobby Brown - is 16 years old. Yes, you read that right. She has long wowed audiences with her prodigious performance as the girl with super-powers, Eleven in Stranger Things, Netflix’s biggest hit. As Enola Holmes, the much younger sister to Sherlock Holmes, Brown delivers yet another cracker of a performance.

 

Set in the late 19th century, the film is based on a fan-fiction series by Nancy Springer. The story starts at a point where Enola’s unusual and talented mother has disappeared without a trace, and she has to call upon the help of her brothers Sherlock and Mycroft to find her. The quest wins her friends, makes her enemies and most importantly helps her develop a perspective on the world around her, including her ability to effect changes to it. In essence, it’s a coming of age drama that ends with Enola finding her own path.

 

But before that can happen, there’s a whole lot of drama, including fight sequences, jumping off trains and falling off bicycles. Use of her mind and wits is on full display too. The film is a celebration of Enola, and successfully engages the audience in the process of doing so. In the hands of a less motivated actor, the film could have come and gone without leaving a mark. But Brown’s confident portrayal of Enola Holmes gives the film a unique touch. As a teenage girl looking for her mother, with nothing but a cryptic gift to guide her, she’s at once lost but determined, vulnerable but strong, inexperienced but talented.

 

It’s not perfect, though. I was getting a bit impatient in the first half of the film and at least some of the final resolution left me wanting more. Perhaps the film is set up for a sequel. It would be nice to see more of Helena Bonham Carter, who plays Holmes’s mother and drives the story forward, but is absent for most part. Hints of what she’s really up to are intriguing, if extreme. Sitting in 2020, and looking back at those times, I think there may well have been mothers who taught their daughters differently and are still finding their way into fiction writing today. And we are all better off for it.

 

In Enola Holmes, she often wonders why her name spelt backwards is ‘Alone’, till she understands it better. I wouldn’t spoil her derivation for you, but it ties a neat bow to the story. And not one without some nice food for thought.