A cautionary tale about environmental exploitation veers into predictability in Lee Haven Jones' slow-burn directorial debut.
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.
Published 19 Aug 2022
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