52 Films by Women Vol 2. 45. DARK RIVER (Director: Clio Barnard)
Stop me if you have heard this one before. In rural contemporary England, a young woman returns to the family farm after the death of a close family member. The farm is in difficult straits. The woman tries her best to fix things but also come to terms with demons from her past. That for the most part is the plot of writer-director Hope Dickson Leach’s accomplished feature debut, The Levelling . It is also a description of Clio Barnard’s third film as writer-director, Dark River , adapted from Rose Tremain’s novel, Trespass . British films have a habit of recycling Hollywood movie titles: Dog Soldiers , directed by Neil Marshall, about a group of soldiers on a military exercise who take on werewolves, is also the name of a 1978 Vietnam War movie directed by Karel Reisz. I can understand why Barnard did not take the name of a 1992 Walter Hill movie starring Ice Cube (and not a good one at that) nor for that matter a 2011 damp squib of a home invasion thriller starring Nicolas Cage...