Two for Joy | Little White Lies

Two for Joy

26 Sep 2018 / Released: 28 Sep 2018

Words by Hannah Strong

Directed by Tom Beard

Starring Billie Piper, Daniel Mays, and Samantha Morton

Woman in white shirt leaning on concrete pool edge, underwater view with blue hues.
Woman in white shirt leaning on concrete pool edge, underwater view with blue hues.
3

Anticipation.

Looks like it could be a slice of Northern misery porn.

4

Enjoyment.

Morton is as good as ever, but relative newcomer Emilia Jones is one to watch.

4

In Retrospect.

A refreshingly empathetic take on familiar subject matter.

Saman­tha Mor­ton plays a moth­er strug­gling with depres­sion after the death of her hus­band in Tom Beard’s sen­si­tive famil­ial drama.

We don’t talk about Saman­tha Mor­ton enough. In a career span­ning almost 30 years, she’s racked up two Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tions and a raft of high-pro­file per­for­mances, work­ing with the likes of Char­lie Kauf­man, David Cro­nen­berg and Har­mo­ny Korine. But still she flies under the prover­bial cin­e­mat­ic radar. Per­haps this is how Mor­ton likes it – she takes chances with her roles, bring­ing her tal­ent to high and low bud­get fea­tures alike.

In Tom Beard’s direc­to­r­i­al debut, Two for Joy, Mor­ton gives anoth­er pow­er­ful yet under­stat­ed per­for­mance as Aisha, a moth­er strug­gling to raise her chil­dren in the wake of her husband’s death. In a des­per­ate attempt to for­get their trou­bles, Aisha takes her shy daugh­ter Vi (Emil­ia Jones) and tear­away son Troy (Bad­ger Skel­ton) to the sea­side car­a­van park they used to fre­quent in hap­pi­er times. It’s off-sea­son and the weath­er looks as mis­er­able as the fam­i­ly them­selves do, but things appear to take a turn when they meet friend­ly camp­site man­ag­er Lias (Daniel Mays), who’s joined by his sis­ter Lil­lah (Bil­lie Piper) and pre­co­cious niece Miran­da (Bel­la Ramsey).

A des­per­ate sense of sad­ness haunts the two fam­i­lies, both dri­ven to the coast by domes­tic dis­or­der. Com­par­isons are clear between Beard’s film and Ken Loach’s kitchen sink dra­mas, or Andrea Arnold’s ear­ly work, which shined a light on life on the British pover­ty line. Yet Beard’s film is strong enough to stand on its own, thanks to smart, nat­u­ral­is­tic cast­ing which makes the most of its stars’ tal­ents, from Morton’s wide-eyed vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to Piper’s surly defen­sive­ness bol­stered by a high pony­tail and large hoop ear­rings. Note­wor­thy too are the young­sters who pow­er the film with their heart­break­ing turns – capri­cious and melan­choly, indis­putable prod­ucts of their unfor­tu­nate environments.

It’s a sad state of affairs in which a fail­ure to com­mu­ni­cate prop­er­ly looms large over all par­ties, and no coastal retreat can alle­vi­ate the pain that clings to Beard’s char­ac­ters. A sense of creep­ing dread even­tu­al­ly turns to gen­uine ter­ror, but that’s not to say Two for Joy is pure melo­dra­ma – hope lives with­in its bones, too.

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