‘Enola Holmes’ is Feminist Fun

There’s a new Holmes in town and her name is Enola.

Played by Millie Bobby Brown and based on the Nancy Springer invention at the centre of her YA book series ‘The Enola Holmes Mysteries’, the new Netflix film offers an introduction to Sherlock’s dazzling younger sister in a picture simply titled ‘Enola Holmes’ (2020).

While the Arthur Conan Doyle story of her famed older brothers Sherlock and Mycroft are well known, Enola is a Holmes many are just getting to know. 

Raised to be a fighting, free-thinking, curious and creative young teenager by her mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham-Carter), Enola is abruptly abandoned on her 16th birthday.

With her eccentric, secretive, women-only meeting hosting mother in the wind but prone to talking in ciphers, Enola, who hasn’t seen her brothers since she was a toddler, takes it upon herself to look for her after a less than stellar reunion with her siblings. 

Sherlock, played by Henry Cavill, doesn’t seem to care much and her brother Sam Claflin’s Mycroft wants to ship her off to a finishing school on the first carriage.

Featuring a runaway, a missing mother, a murder plot, a feminist underworld and a coming of age and origin story, ‘Enola Holmes’ plays fast and loose with historical setting and accuracy but is a charming and mostly cheerful adventure in which Enola’s obstacles are myriad but her grab at freedom and unwillingness to conform to the feminine standards and gender roles of the day is indefatigable. 

Though you’ll wish for meatier scenes between Bonham-Carter and Brown as well as some real insight into what drives Eudoria, everyone seems to pale in the face of the Brown’s charisma as she breaks the fourth wall to alternately wink, smirk, narrate or ask for assistance from the audience.

Also starring Susie Wokoma as the combat-trained owner of an underground women’s café, Louis Partridge as the dude in distress as well as Burn Gorman, Adeel Akhtar Frances de la Tour and Fiona Shaw, the film is an excellent vehicle for Bobby Brown and two hours of somewhat moralising feminist fun. 

Stream director Harry Bradbeer’s heady take on the first story in Springer’s series of mysteries but don’t count on seeing much Sherlock. The famous sleuth does eventually get on board but remains firmly in the background even as his little sister gives him a run for his detecting money.

‘Enola Holmes’ (2020) is now streaming on Netflix.

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