Twenty years ago, Paul Andrew Williams announced himself as a smart new British talent with his ferocious gangland picture London to Brighton, and his creativity has continued in film and TV ever since. His new film is a haunted, social-realist drama with elements of Mike Leigh but also moments of thriller and even horror. Williams isn’t shy of stabbing us with an old-fashioned jump scare towards the end, which in fact challenges the audiences with its refusal of categorisation. There are two superb lead performances from Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn and an outstanding supporting turn from Jason Watkins.
Dragonfly is about loneliness and alienation and about the eternal mystery of other people, the fear of intimacy and the unknowable existence of urban neighbours. Elsie, played by Blethyn, is an older woman who is quite capable of independent living in her bungalow, but a recent fall and an injured wrist has meant that her middle-aged son (Watkins), all too obviously to compensate for not visiting that often, has paid for daily visits from a private agency nurses. They are overworked and not doing an especially good job. Really, she doesn’t need these nurses and by enduring them, Elsie is shouldering the burden of her son’s guilt.
