DARK RIVER
Country strife…
The English countryside – where Withnail & I once ventured “by mistake” – is undergoing an unlikely renaissance. Following 2017’s The Levelling and God’s Own Country, Clio Barnard’s drama offers another compelling argument for cinema to head for the hills.
In a plot that echoes The Levelling, prodigal daughter Alice (Ruth Wilson) returns to the family farm after the death of her father (played in flashback by a near-mute Sean Bean). An awkward reunion with estranged brother Joe (Mark Stanley) soon mutates into a seething psychological duel, as the siblings fight over tenancy rights to the land, all the while trying to ignore bleak secrets from their childhood.
Like Barnard’s earlier studies of Yorkshire life, The Arbor and The Selfish Giant, this is an unsentimental depiction of a neglected Northern community, scrabbling for subsistence. What’s different is how Barnard hitches her social-realist instincts to a story with timeless, Thomas Hardy-esque heft.
The effect is simultaneously sober and startling, and undoubtedly enhanced by Barnard working with a star for the first time. Wilson brings a wiry toughness – she’s a dab hand at sheep shearing – but the camera soaks in those expressive features until it’s obvious that Alice’s resilience masks enormous, unresolved trauma. Simon Kinnear
THE VERDICT
Rural life is familiar terrain for British cinema, but with Barnard as our guide, it remains an enthralling destination.