Rare Beasts

When we say a movie ​“gets under your skin”, is that a good or a bad thing? Is the sen­sa­tion irri­tat­ing? Does the expres­sion inti­mate that per­son­al space is being invad­ed? Or does it denote some­thing that sticks with you – merges with you – and, scratch and claw as you might, you just can’t get rid of it?

Bil­lie Piper’s direc­to­r­i­al debut, which she also wrote and stars in, is all of the above, a red-raw slab of heart-on-sleeve ener­gy which does every­thing bar reach­ing through the screen to rat­tle your seat for a reac­tion. Rare Beasts is a provoca­tive, ener­gis­ing and angry work, the prod­uct less of an indus­try main­stay who want­ed to add ​‘film­mak­er’ to their CV and more of some­one who had an urgent state­ment to make, and the only way to artic­u­late that state­ment with ample pow­er and clar­i­ty was via the hal­lowed medi­um of film.

Piper stars as the thrilling­ly con­fronta­tion­al Mandy, a sin­gle moth­er look­ing for a new roman­tic con­nec­tion who decides to explore the pos­si­bil­i­ties of love and mar­riage with one of her work col­leagues, Pete (Leo Bill). The prob­lem is, Pete seems to verge on the evil with his aggres­sive­ly solip­sis­tic world­view. He’s like a human Mar­mite effi­gy, and yet Mandy is mys­te­ri­ous­ly and per­sis­tent­ly drawn to him, as if she sees him as a trag­ic chal­lenge to be bro­ken down, or a social cast­away in need of salvation.

She sees a sim­ple truth to the fact that Pete is con­scious and even proud of his own awful­ness – there is no mys­tery to him or no (even more) squalid under­side to be dis­cov­ered. Unlike her father (anoth­er win­ning David Thewlis sad-dad turn), whose charm­ing intro­ver­sion made him a less-than-stel­lar parental role mod­el. Mandy’s moth­er (Ker­ry Fox), mean­while, bat­tles lone­li­ness and ill­ness with a punk­ish­ly blasé́ atti­tude – all of which serves to com­pound the con­fu­sion in her life.

While this may sound like a worka­day British indie com­e­dy, that couldn’t be fur­ther from the truth, as Piper directs dia­logue exchanges with a stac­ca­to urgency, while her cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, Patrick Meller, employs care­ful fram­ing and sin­u­ous cam­era move­ment to enhance the expres­sive­ness of the actors and the over­all atmos­phere of deli­cious­ly acrid whimsy.

Sun­ny orches­tral music cues that feel filched from a Hol­ly­wood musi­cal (or more like a melan­cholic Jacques Demy operetta) are deployed iron­i­cal­ly through­out, as Mandy fires out pained grins through the tor­ment and con­fu­sion in her life, which also includes a bril­liant­ly writ­ten brat son (Toby Woolf ) who is nei­ther lov­ably pre­co­cious nor mechan­i­cal­ly irri­tat­ing – an actu­al liv­ing, breath­ing three dimen­sion­al child char­ac­ter (a rare beast indeed!).

Not every barb lands, and some of the float­ing side play­ers are ush­ered in as easy fig­ures of fun, but it’s Piper’s prob­ing, out­spo­ken ambi­tion and her will­ing­ness to pose, answer and then ques­tion the answers to per­verse ques­tions about the lop­sided nature of human rela­tions that real­ly dri­ves this thing home. Its final scene musters a deliri­ous bolt of open-end­ed emo­tion which authen­ti­cates Piper’s fem­i­nist cre­den­tials with­out things com­ing across as play­ing to the peanut gallery.

So a ful­ly-formed direc­tor, a force­ful­ly orig­i­nal writer and a bril­liant per­former – on the evi­dence of Rare Beasts, Ms Piper might be one of the most excit­ing big screen tal­ents to emerge from the UK for some time.