The Elite: The Lady in the Yard

Solitude can be a deprivation of kindness, of love, or it can be a longing for what was lost. Sometimes, that same feeling makes us do things that we don’t even know we desire from the bottom of our being. The Woman in the Yard was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, starring Danielly Deadwyler as Ramona and Okwui Okpokwasili, and it showed exactly this. Ramona, a mother of three, lost everything — lost her husband. I can only imagine what losing the love of your life can feel like, and it must be devastating.

 The story starts in the morning of the day, with Ramona in bed watching old videos of her husband on repeat, ignoring life’s difficulties. When her son comes into the room and informs her that the electricity is out, she goes up and steps off the bed asking for “strength.” This is what she longs for; strength to keep going, or so we thought. When she walks out of the room, she sees a female figure in the yard just sitting and staring. An unknown woman whose desires turn out to be unexpected.

 She came here to help Ramona, because she asked for it. The woman came there to help her complete her upmost desire; “today is the day.” The woman terrorizes the house and destroys it. It always felt like a battle that would never end, and all Ramona wanted to do was protect her children. There were revealed lies, moments of control and manipulation that Ramona implemented on her children. She is forced to reflect on what she has done. Where she realizes that it was all just her way of coping with her depravity. She was sinking, but she did not let her children sink with her, and that’s what was beautiful about this. A mother who grieved, a mother who lied, a mother who protected her children from what haunted her: her own desire to end her suffering from what most hurt her.

 The woman’s purpose was not one of haunting and hurting, but one of relieving. Ramona felt as if nothing was important anymore; she suffered from his absence so much that she couldn’t bear living without him. This was the woman’s final purpose; removing her from this planet of existence, to live with the one she lost.

  But in the end, she decides to stay for her children. She might have feared that gun, below her neck, pointed at her skull. She might have wanted this more than anything, but she chose what was right for her children. The terror was calmed; it now simply waited for another day to collect Ramona.

 This movie is a beautiful representation of the duality of self, and what we can sometimes do to ourselves and want for ourselves. Even when that is the most horrible thing a person could want.

 Watch it now on Prime, it’s a beauty that must be loved!