Cen­sor

With its claus­tro­pho­bic, retro-styled open­ing, Pra­no Bailey-Bond’s Cen­sor ini­tial­ly brings to mind Berber­ian Sound Stu­dio, Peter Stickland’s gial­lo-inspired psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror from 2012.

In this case, how­ev­er, the immer­sive, meta­tex­tu­al action occurs not in a record­ing stu­dio but a pri­vate screen­ing room, where Enid (Niamh Algar in a star-mak­ing dual role of sorts) rou­tine­ly watch­es grue­some low-rent genre flicks in her capac­i­ty as a film cen­sor. The organ­i­sa­tion she works for is a thin­ly-veiled proxy for the British Board of Film Clas­si­fi­ca­tion (BBFC) which, despite a pub­lic rela­tions rebrand in 1984, his­tor­i­cal­ly func­tioned as a cen­sor­ship body (the C orig­i­nal­ly stood for ​‘Cen­sors’).

That name change was prompt­ed by the pass­ing of the Video Record­ings Act, which required all com­mer­cial video made avail­able for rental or pur­chase in the UK to car­ry a cer­tifi­cate – a reac­tionary response to the moral pan­ic, whipped up by Mary White­house and her tabloid cronies, sur­round­ing the Home Office’s infa­mous ​‘Video Nas­ties’ list; films which under the new leg­is­la­tion could be pros­e­cut­ed on the grounds of obscenity.

With Cen­sor, Bai­ley-Bond builds on her 2015 short film Nasty – itself a lucid VHS fever dream – by pay­ing homage to the undu­ly vil­lainised exploita­tion fare of yes­ter­year while espous­ing the peren­ni­al truth that real life is far more fucked up than screen fiction.

Iron­i­cal­ly, it is Enid’s pro­fes­sion that puts her in harm’s way. Life begins to imi­tate art when a bru­tal mur­der leads the press to point an accusato­ry fin­ger at Enid, who it tran­spires per­son­al­ly sanc­tioned the release of the film that report­ed­ly aroused the culprit.

At the same time, she starts to fix­ate on an appari­tion of her sis­ter, whose dis­ap­pear­ance many years ago Enid blames her­self for and is evi­dent­ly still in denial about. Enid con­vinces her­self that a per­vy small-time film pro­duc­er (Michael Smi­ley) and a noto­ri­ous direc­tor named Fred­er­ick North hold the key to unlock­ing the secrets of her sister’s fate. But as old wounds reopen and Enid becomes con­sumed by long-sup­pressed mem­o­ries from her child­hood, much to the dis­tress of her par­ents, Bai­ley-Bond ensures that the cen­tral mys­tery remains just that.

Cen­sor would make for a fas­ci­nat­ing dou­ble bill with Emer­ald Fennell’s Promis­ing Young Woman. Aside from being the fea­ture-length debuts of two female writer/​directors who seem des­tined to go on to even big­ger and bet­ter things, these films share a the­mat­ic con­nec­tion in what they reveal about the griev­ing process and how deep-lying emo­tion­al trau­ma can cloud one’s iden­ti­ty and judge­ment. Both films also con­tain a piv­otal scene – set in a remote wood­land cab­in, no less – in which the female pro­tag­o­nist attempts to exact revenge on an unsus­pect­ing male aggres­sor, cul­mi­nat­ing in a moment of shock­ing, fatal violence.

Sneered at by her male col­leagues for tak­ing her job too seri­ous­ly, Enid is acute­ly aware that the misog­y­nis­tic acts she bears wit­ness to each day – be it casu­al work­place sex­ism or sadis­tic on-screen sex­u­al aggres­sion – are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. Of course, hor­ror cin­e­ma has a patchy track record (to put it extreme­ly mild­ly) where gen­der issues and broad­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion are con­cerned, and as such Cen­sor is all the more com­pelling for the deft­ness and pre­ci­sion with which it simul­ta­ne­ous­ly skew­ers the film industry’s patri­ar­chal bias, the rank hypocrisy of Thatcher’s Britain, and the brit­tle­ness of the male ego.

To quote one of many deli­cious barbs from Bai­ley-Bond and Antho­ny Fletcher’s screen­play, ​“I only trimmed the tini­est bit off the end of the genitals.”