A MILLION LITTLE PIECES

I WAS utterly hooked by this startlingly different British drama which deploys an arresting visual style to catch the deep social currents of a contemporary Cornish fishing village.

Edward Rowe is a force of nature as a, determined fisherman who dreams of owning his own boat and maintaining his family’s seagoing tradition. But an inexorable tide of middleclass tourists are sinking the prospects of the locals, creating a conflict which is to have tragic consequences.

Remarkable for its consummate editing, economical storytelling, compelling humanity, salty dialogue and dry humour, it thrillingly mixes cutting social observations and elements of folk horror with an almost documentary air.

Harking back to post-war cinema by being filmed in black and white on oldfashioned 16mm film stock, the wonderfully stark photography is full of gnarled textures and lends a timelessness to this very modern tale, which is the best British drama of the year so far.

★★★★★

(15) DIRECTOR Sam Taylor-Johnson distances herself from the controversy that engulfed James Frey’s 2003 memoir A Million Little Pieces by taking her own artistic liberties to visualise the book’s first-person stream of consciousness.

Some of these bold choices pay off – the opening image of James dancing naked around a flat establishes the grim, nihilistic tone, and her husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s, pictured unwavering commitment to the lead role.

A nightmarish root canal procedure without anaesthetic, which was a centrepiece of the book, is terrifying when we can hear the piercing scream of the dentist’s drill as it burrows into infected teeth.

Stylistic flourishes abound but Frey’s internal conflict and the demons which drive him to self-destruct in a fug of booze and crack are frequently lost in the melee.