Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Some film critics are all too quick to ascribe a form to the film they have watched, usually labelling it in a negative way: an unexciting ‘thriller’, a ‘horror’ film without scares and so on. What they don’t do is recalibrate their interpretation to better describe the spectacle that is presented to them. I don’t blame these reviewers so much. A filmmaker may offer an element associated with a form, for example, an individual pretending to be someone else for the sake of appearances. We associate this trope with farce. There is a high stakes situation and the person with power must not discover that the woman he has fallen for is in fact the maid. How could he be tricked in such a way? What else might he think as a result? Farces depend on their comical impact on the utter collapse of order – the pretence that spirals out of control. What happens when a filmmaker takes the promise of a farce but uses it to interrogate the impulse behind the deception? The drama’s impact is les...

  ‘The Incident’ is the feature debut of Jane Linfoot whose reputation as a director to watch has been established through four short films: ‘Creep’ (2005), ‘Youth’ (2007), ‘On Your Own’ (2010) and ‘Sea View’, a twenty-four minute short film nominated for a BAFTA in 2014. You can liken her steady rise to that of another Jane – Jane Campion. ‘Sea View’ explores the relationship between a teenage girl and an older man, which is also the starting point of ‘The Incident’. Stopping his car outside a pizza place somewhere in Huddersfield, Joe (Tom Hughes, currently basking in the attention given to the BBC TV series ‘Victoria’ in which he plays Prince Albert) attracts the attention of disaffected teen Lily (Tasha Connor), who throws her hair this way and that and salivates on Joe’s hand. If I were Joe, I’d clear off right there without picking up my pizza – that’s why you order in. Joe does something that Joe shouldn’t do, namely invite Lily in to perform an act which requires a cash-p...