Kalei­do­scope

This under­pow­ered, cod-Freudi­an psy­chodra­ma from writer/​director Rupert Jones opts for real­i­ty-warp­ing acro­bat­ics over cogent dra­ma at near­ly ever turn. In the lead is Jones’ broth­er Toby, reli­able, dili­gent­ly immersed as ever in the role of odd­ball lon­er Carl, whose trag­ic, claus­tro­pho­bic exis­tence appears to stem from emo­tion­al trau­mas he suf­fered as a nip­per. The kalei­do­scope of the title is a trin­ket owned by Carl and serves as a con­trived visu­al metaphor for child­hood nos­tal­gia, and a world in which beau­ty and plea­sure are tran­sient at best.

Carl lives alone in a tow­er block, and it’s a sad life all told, despite the fact that he appears a very affa­ble type of guy. Friend­ly sta­tus updates with his neigh­bour ini­tial­ly attest to his nor­mal­cy, though it tran­spires that he is (unsur­pris­ing­ly) unlucky in love. He plucks up the courage to wade head­long into a the world of online dat­ing, pure­ly as a way to alle­vi­ate his lone­li­ness. But when he final­ly gets Abby (Sinead Matthews) home, in her fig­ure-hug­ging blood-red jeans, she seems famil­iar from a short pro­logue in which Carl dis­cov­ers a woman’s corpse in his bath­room. The ques­tion, then, is how we bridge the gap from high­ly awk­ward flirt­ing to what appears to be murder.

Time­frames and true iden­ti­ties are blurred, and it becomes evi­dent ear­ly on that Rupert Jones isn’t ask­ing the view­er to take any­thing at face val­ue. The rev­e­la­tion that Carl is an ex-con­vict prompts fur­ther ques­tions regard­ing the verac­i­ty of events, as well as his sup­posed inno­cence as the mol­ly­cod­dled son sim­ply attempt­ing to break free from the iron grip of his dom­i­neer­ing moth­er (Anne Reid). A sig­nif­i­cant ellip­sis between Carl’s roman­tic bungling with Abby and her death is what dri­ves mat­ters for­ward, as we join the ​“hero” in his attempts to fill in this impor­tant blank.

It’s a decent­ly put togeth­er film, but unfor­tu­nate­ly it nev­er feels more than an exer­cise in tech­ni­cal bravu­ra and sim­plis­tic, cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly prac­ti­cal mus­ings on the inner work­ings of the mind. The links drawn between cin­e­ma and the inter­nal con­scious feel deeply con­trived, to the point where it’s very dif­fi­cult to extend empa­thy towards any­one on screen. Jones has clear­ly spent a lot of time think­ing about how all the pieces fit togeth­er into a pret­ty, sym­met­ri­cal shape, but life and gen­uine human emo­tion are rarely so neat.