The Feast

Unfold­ing over the course of one evening, Lee Haven Jones’ direc­to­r­i­al debut sees an afflu­ent Welsh MP and his fam­i­ly host­ing a din­ner par­ty at their gar­ish­ly mod­ernist, cav­ernous estate in the Welsh moun­tains. The fam­i­ly have a lucra­tive min­ing busi­ness at stake, while their two guests – busi­ness­man Euros (Rho­dri Meilir), and local farmer Mair (Lisa Pal­frey) – are set to sign a con­tract that will allow them to mine the coun­try­side. With their envi­ron­men­tal exploita­tion rav­aging the rur­al com­mu­ni­ty, the fem­i­nine forces of nature embark on a quest to sti­fle their greed.

Enter Cadi (Annes Elwy), a doe-eyed young woman who arrives at the house to be a wait­ress and domes­tic helper for the soirée. Elwy gives a bewitch­ing per­for­mance as Cadi, whose machi­na­tions lead the din­ner par­ty to go ter­ri­bly awry. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is cer­tain­ly a feast for the eyes, and a pal­pa­ble atmos­phere of fore­bod­ing and dread under­pins the nar­ra­tive as curi­ous cam­era angles linger on mod­ern min­i­mal­ist inte­ri­ors and fan­cy food preparations.

While the lore remains aching­ly unclear for the major­i­ty of the film’s dura­tion, the final act guides us by the hand as it seems to prac­ti­cal­ly spell out the plot by delib­er­ate­ly peel­ing away every sin­gle nar­ra­tive lay­er. The cin­e­mat­ic form seems to be reduced to a bare mech­a­nism to com­mu­ni­cate the film’s cen­tral theme – nature’s revenge on bour­geois commerce.

Man­u­fac­tured dra­ma is thrown into the mix to jus­ti­fy this social dis­com­fort, mud­dling the dis­tinc­tion between text and sub­text. The cen­tral con­ceit then seems to fall flat, the line between folk­lore and eco-hor­ror los­ing all its pre­vi­ous­ly-estab­lished tex­ture. Arbi­trary con­ti­nu­ity errors, heavy-hand­ed sym­bol­ism, an ago­nis­ing­ly labo­ri­ous pace and shal­low char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion leave a sour taste in the mouth, espe­cial­ly as the pay­off is not grue­some enough to jus­ti­fy the means that get us there.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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