Sink

The fore­bod­ing out­line of London’s cor­po­rate sky­scrap­ers looms large in writer/​director Mark Gillis’ fea­ture debut, Sink. To Mar­tin Herdman’s Micky, an ami­able bloke rely­ing on a string of zero-hour con­tracts to get by, it serves as a con­stant reminder of the sta­bil­i­ty he lacks. Yet this film is not a sick­ly dose of mis­er­ab­lism as its premise may suggest.

Sink is the kind of film that non-UK audi­ences will need sub­ti­tles for, where ​‘bol­locks’ is uttered more than ​‘hel­lo’ and where a ​‘Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals’ cook­book is used to pound down a faulty pota­to chip­per. In short, it makes you proud to be British.

It’s also the kind of film that rarely sees the light of day. Made on a shoe­string bud­get, with its entire crew agree­ing to deferred fees, it’s only the team’s ded­i­ca­tion (and Mark Rylance step­ping in as asso­ciate pro­duc­er) that has allowed Sink to swim. The com­mit­ment shows. It may be scruffy around the edges, but this tale of an hon­est man resort­ing to a life of crime after suc­cumb­ing to the pres­sures of dead-end jobs, his demen­tia-rid­dled father and his son’s drug addic­tion is a con­sis­tent­ly charm­ing affair. As that har­row­ing syn­op­sis may let on, it’s charm­ing to a fault.

It’s refresh­ing to watch a film about the UK’s cur­rent job mar­ket cri­sis that refus­es to resort to man­u­fac­tured mar­tyr­dom (hey there, Ken Loach). What’s less wel­come is an affa­ble tone that con­stant­ly strips the pathos of its punch. It’s dif­fi­cult to feel the strain that Micky is under when his lamen­ta­tions are con­stant­ly book­end­ed by wry one-lin­ers, as if he’s unfazed him­self. As a result, the film func­tions much bet­ter as a breezy slice-of-life dram­e­dy than a vital cur­rent affairs polemic.

Not to dis­miss its heft. The father’s debil­i­tat­ing ill­ness is a par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant strand, and the final stretch’s jolt into thriller ter­ri­to­ry is expert­ly weight­ed, mus­ter­ing moments of blis­ter­ing (and blis­ter­ing­ly unex­pect­ed) ten­sion. Sink may be spot­ty and tonal­ly imbal­anced at times, but its char­ac­ters feel lived-in and at home in a ver­sion of coun­cil estate Lon­don that’s safe from stu­dio glam­or­i­sa­tion. Gillis has gift­ed a voice to those caught in a rut while the world moves on with­out them. They use it well.