Asif Kapadia returns with something unlike his previous acclaimed films … but maybe not utterly unlike. Kapadia has become known for intense documentary studies of agonised public figures including Ayrton Senna, Amy Winehouse and Diego Maradona, for whom the glare of attention, and the claustrophobic crush of public adulation, was a kind of addictive ordeal. There are points of similarity in this new, fascinating and perplexingly ambiguous film, something without a clear story, but which admits of any number of readings.
Creature is a filmed theatre project, capturing Akram Khan’s English National Ballet work, also entitled Creature, starring the charismatic dancer Jeffrey Cirio as the Creature, thrillingly athletic and physical, every muscle and tendon visible. The Creature is apparently kept captive in some remote army research unit-slash-prison in the snowy wastes, overseen by a cruel figure called the Major (Fabian Reimair), experimented upon by the Doctor (Stina Quagebeur, who has a distinct Nurse Ratched look), but poignantly befriended by a lowly servant or cleaner called Marie, played by Erina Takahashi.
