Iona

The beau­ti­ful open­ing sequence of Scott Graham’s Iona is almost entire­ly silent, save for sounds of nature. It sees Iona (Ruth Neg­ga) and her son Bull (Ben Gal­lagher) mak­ing the long jour­ney from main­land Scot­land to the isle of Iona. A burn­ing car is set against the awe-inspir­ing back­drop of the island, this image set­ting the film’s visu­al tone. This is no sim­ple home­com­ing sto­ry, but a dra­ma with a lit­tle more bite.

Iona returns home after sev­er­al years away and she finds a com­mu­ni­ty in sta­sis. The mod­ern world has not touched this remote isle: milk is still kept in pails; the pop­u­la­tion comes togeth­er to pick straw­ber­ries; the church is cen­tral to their every­day lives; and most impor­tant­ly, every­one knows one anoth­er. It quick­ly becomes clear that some­thing more than teenage rest­less­ness caused Iona to leave, as the slow paced nar­ra­tive unfolds with a pleas­ing lack of obvi­ous impe­tus. The speed of the sto­ry reflects the speed of life on the island, plac­ing the rugged beau­ty of the set­ting front-and-cen­tre as the nar­ra­tive becomes increas­ing­ly bleak.

The epony­mous Iona might be the woman or the island, both hav­ing equal claim to being the cen­tral focus of the film. The con­trast between the nat­ur­al set­ting and the dark­ness brought to the island by Iona and her son is reflect­ed in the colour palate. While the native islanders blend with their lush green sur­round­ings, Iona and Bull are shown in shades of blue, instant­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing them from their reli­gious neighbours.

Gra­ham employs silence effec­tive­ly. A look can often con­vey more than words and this prin­ci­ple is used to great effect as Iona’s arrival home is met with a range of var­ied, yet unspo­ken emo­tions. The unex­pressed trau­ma which caused their return, the rea­son for Iona’s pre­vi­ous depar­ture, the rela­tion­ships between Iona, her guardian and her child­hood friend: these are left unspo­ken for much of the film, con­tribut­ing to the ten­sion hang­ing over this insu­lar tale.

A dra­mat­i­cal­ly blunt end­ing feels a lit­tle too obvi­ous. Still, Iona reveals a prac­ticed hand and a real affin­i­ty for the island com­mu­ni­ties it rep­re­sents, while leav­ing a num­ber of threads untied to ensure a lin­ger­ing intrigue after the cred­its have rolled.