Sec­ond Coming

As Stone Ros­es fans know all too well, titling one’s cre­ative prod­uct after the mirac­u­lous return of Jesus Christ is no guar­an­tee of qual­i­ty. Thank­ful­ly, play­wright Deb­bie Tuck­er Green – mak­ing her screen­writ­ing and direct­ing debut after 15 years of inter­na­tion­al suc­cess on the stage – fares a great deal bet­ter with her own Sec­ond Com­ing, a mut­ed and dis­turb­ing fam­i­ly dra­ma laced with inef­fa­ble meta­phys­i­cal qualities.

The title refers to the cen­tral mys­tery upon which the sparse plot hinges. Wel­fare offi­cer Jax (Nadine Mar­shall), who lives with her con­struc­tion work­er hus­band Mark (Idris Elba) and school­boy son JJ (Kai Fran­cis-Lewis) in a leafy south Lon­don sub­urb, dis­cov­ers that she has fall­en preg­nant. Yet the iden­ti­ty of the father is a conun­drum. It doesn’t seem to be Mark: in a series of sen­si­tive­ly-han­dled scenes, it’s made clear that the couple’s sex life has with­ered away despite their evi­dent affec­tion for one another.

So who is respon­si­ble? Did Jax cheat on Mark? If so, she’s not say­ing – and she reacts furi­ous­ly when her best friend sug­gests so. Has Jax been vis­it­ed by the Lord in some Lam­beth-based inver­sion of Rosemary’s Baby? Or is the mys­tery sim­ply a man­i­fes­ta­tion of Jax’s trou­bled men­tal state, per­haps pro­voked by the series of pri­or mis­car­riages that are sub­tly invoked in the script?

While the film is doubt­less impres­sive as a por­trait of a tight-knit fam­i­ly unrav­el­ling slow­ly, much of its impact derives from Marshall’s extra­or­di­nary per­for­mance as the trou­bled moth­er-to-be. Fre­quent­ly framed in unscrupu­lous close-up, Mar­shall nails the trick­i­est of tasks: to ani­mate an inscrutable intro­vert into a com­pelling locus for drama.

Though Sec­ond Com­ing is a high­ly orig­i­nal work, Jax’s pained, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly tumul­tuous reac­tion to her predica­ment — and the non­judge­men­tal man­ner in which it’s pre­sent­ed — recalls both the plight of Julianne Moore’s trou­bled house­wife in Todd Haynes’ 1995 film, Safe, and the slow-motion social night­mare of a woman preg­nant with her husband’s brother’s baby in Andrew Dosunmu’s under­rat­ed Moth­er of George from 2013.

Tuck­er Green’s tal­ent for craft­ing rhyth­mic, nat­u­ral­is­tic dia­logue – and the apti­tude of her excel­lent cast for deliv­er­ing it – is evi­dent through­out, as is her gift for evok­ing a spe­cif­ic cul­tur­al milieu. Jax and her fam­i­ly fre­quent­ly switch to a spe­cif­ic brand of British-Jamaican patois when emo­tions run high.

Yet Sec­ond Com­ing is equal­ly notable for its specif­i­cal­ly cin­e­mat­ic, atmos­pher­ic qual­i­ties. The shal­low-depth, gauzy cin­e­matog­ra­phy is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly calm­ing and omi­nous, and comes cour­tesy of Urszu­la Pon­tikos who, hav­ing also shot Andrew Haigh’s Week­end from 2011 and Hong Khaou’s Lilt­ing from 2014, is fast becom­ing a key play­er in a new strain of low-key British nat­u­ral­ism. Mark Eckersley’s ellip­ti­cal, Boy­hood-esque edit­ing pat­terns, mean­while, force the view­er to pay atten­tion – Tuck­er Green couldn’t be less inter­est­ed in spoon-feed­ing her audience.