“Empathetic and impactful, as well as profoundly moving, Alice On & Off is a poignant portrait of contemporary womanhood”

In a squalid apartment in Bucharest we see traces of someone’s existence – empty pill bottles, dust-covered furniture and artworks scattered across its walls – all of which point to signs of life. However, the resident herself, a young woman named Alice, is missing, and the visitor in this particular instance is her former boyfriend who is feverishly searching for her, as she had suddenly taken their son and disappeared. In reality,  Alice has made her escape in an effort to restart her life after a decade of poor decisions, or rather what those around her have cited as such. Having been involved with a man nearly forty years her senior, she fell pregnant as a teenager. This essentially derailed her life and forced her to take quite drastic measures, including entering into the sometimes treacherous world of online sex work. Using that as a way to support herself and balance her fledgling career as a visual artist, she is disappointed to discover it cannot assist in her efforts to survive. Her story is the foundation for Alice On & Off, a haunting documentary in which Isabela von Tent crafts a decade-spanning odyssey, following the titular character over the years as she grows and matures from an aimless teenager into a more self-assured young woman, someone who begins to make sense of the world that surrounds her, ready to take on the challenges of adulthood. Simple but profoundly effective, this film handles difficult material with poise, empathy and honesty in every frame.

Romania remains a society driven by patriarchal values, even if encouraging strides forward have been taken over the years to give women more agency. Alice On & Off is a film that explores the life of someone who has unfortunately fallen through the proverbial cracks after having been failed by the system, and has had to fight to rebuild her life, a lengthy journey with many obstacles. One of the earliest conversations we witness in the film is her much older lover proudly discussing how he took advantage of the ambiguous legal limitations around the age of consent to romance a girl who was young enough to be his daughter. The director uses these infuriating details to create a portrait of Alice as she develops over the years, filtering it through both her journey as a woman and a mother, two very paths that bring about several challenges for which she finds herself ill-equipped at times. Her motivations are clear: she merely wants to survive and to constantly remind her son that, regardless of the circumstances, she adores him unconditionally. The film shows her oscillation between her hometown and the places elsewhere that serve as her momentary sanctuary from the painful memories of the past, which von Tent interweaves with Alice’s testimonies into the memories she has with her own mother, another difficult relationship that helps us understand her personal struggles with motherhood, a theme that the film examines in many different forms.

The director constructed Alice On & Off over the course of roughly a decade, periodically returning to her protagonist’s life, catching up with her and other people in her life in an effort to create this expansive portrait of how the years have progressed. What seems to have started as a fascinating side project has flourished into an engaging and captivating documentary that may not be revolutionary in form but has enough gumption to earn our attention. The subject matter is somewhat controversial – sex work remains a contentious issue – so the director was extremely careful to approach this side of Alice’s life in a manner that was honest but respectful. As we have seen over time, there is a very narrow boundary between compassion and exploitation, and in the hands of someone with the wrong intentions the story of an impoverished sex worker struggling with the challenges of motherhood could have been brutally manipulative and borderline abusive. Instead, von Tent chooses to allow Alice to tell her own story, giving her the agency she has seemingly not been afforded in her own life and giving her the chance to guide the narrative through her own words, which makes a considerable difference.

Alice On & Off is decidedly a more observational film than it is discursive, but it does allow us to glean valuable insights into the person behind the mask, becoming a revealing and honest character study about a young woman striving for a better life. A work of sincere empathy handcrafted by someone who clearly felt nothing but admiration for its subject’s journey; particularly in how she overcame various obstacles, this film is an impactful and essential glimpse into contemporary gender issues as seen through the perspective of a complex young woman who has spent most of her life feeling invisible, with the exception of the faceless individual that supports her through her online work. A pursuit for which she never feels shame, but her desire to have followed a somewhat different path cannot be ignored when it is so clearly displayed in some of the film’s quieter and more intimate moment. This film is very careful to shade in the nuances of Alice without indicating that her actions are in any way demeaning or that she is dehumanized through any of her choices – von Tent is not interested in asserting any kind of judgement on this young woman, and instead wants to give her the chance to amplify her voice through crafting a captivating portrait of a changing family dynamic, told through the perspective of someone plunged into the lifelong responsibility of motherhood long before she was ready. Empathetic and impactful, as well as profoundly moving, Alice On & Off is a poignant portrait of contemporary womanhood as told by someone still coming to terms with her own identity and place in the world.