LAST SUPPER
THE FEAST A rare Welsh-language horror film, with plenty of bite…
This is highbrow for Monday morning,” director Lee Haven Jones tells Teasers. “But I think it was Brecht who said that to be universal, you have to be local first. This is very much a film in that vein.” The film in question is The Feast, the TV veteran’s Welsh-language debut feature, which he describes as “an eco-folk horror”.
The Feast has many surprises worth hiding, but the basic setup is a privileged family gathering at their rural Wales home for a dinner party. Also present is hired help Cadi (Annes Elwy), a quiet young woman who appears on the grounds almost out of thin air. As the day progresses, those assembled each experience various terrors.
“Welsh culture is rich in horrific stories,” says Haven Jones. “If you look at the first existing literature we have in the Welsh language, the Mabinogion, it’s inherently horrific. We looked at those myths and focused on Blodeuwedd, a woman made of flowers. This spirit of nature is bitter and vengeful. The roots of Cadi are in that myth.”
Haven Jones and Elwy reportedly discussed Scarlett Johansson in Under The Skin as a reference for her mesmerising puppet-master performance, and The Feast similarly embraces abstraction. “It’s about the viewer projecting their own thoughts and baggage onto that character,” he explains. “The journey of [The Feast] is one from forensically observed naturalism to something far more grotesque, theatrical and Grand Guignol. I’ve spent lots of time as a director and actor swimming in a soup of naturalism. I wanted to get away from that.” Rest assured, the eventual grotesquery is pure nightmare stuff: “Some of the maggots were real, some were basmati rice.”
‘Welsh culture is rich in horrific stories’ LEE HAVEN JONES
THE FEAST OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 19 AUGUST.