Andrea Riseborough
(Picture: handout)What’s eating Andrea Riseborough? Sometimes this brilliant actress is so intense it’s downright distracting. In the starry, feline-focused biopic The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, nothing matched the voltage of Riseborough’s supporting character, who gave new meaning to the phrase “having kittens”. What luck that, in this stark, low-budget psychological thriller, she’s the centre of attraction. We’re meant to be mesmerised by her fraught, blue eyes; her pain is entirely our gain.
Northern Irish housewife and mother, Laura (Riseborough; nailing the accent just as she did in Shadow Dancer) has a big smile that she uses a lot with her husband, Brendan (Jonjo O’Neill) and son, Tadhg (Lewis McAskie). A few years ago, their daughter Josie was killed in a car accident. When a family move into the house next door, Laura is instantly drawn to the young girl, Megan (Niamh Dornan). That big smile of Laura’s falters, though, when the child starts alluding to the past. Megan claims she’s been here before. Is she a reincarnation of Josie or is someone trying to mess with Laura’s mind?
First-time director Stacey Gregg (who also wrote the screenplay) has obviously been influenced by the gaslighting gems Rosemary’s Baby and Birth. But Belfast-born Gregg doesn’t want to play by the genre rules. Good for her. A fascinating idea that’s crucial to the plot is that tragedies don’t happen in a vacuum; that traumatic events can cause unrelated secrets to be unearthed or, in some cases, buried even deeper.
Another theme is class (Megan’s family aren’t as posh as Laura’s and Brendan seems especially discomforted by that gap), but perhaps the most original element is that Megan, who wears her hair in a bob, is casually non-binary. In one startling sequence, Megan swings from a playground climbing frame, but the camera is only interested in her legs and shoes. Megan’s clumpy school shoes go back and forth, confronting us with the reality of an imaginative child, who relishes being between worlds. Gregg says she’s “never strongly identified with being female”, and that coming from a working class family made breaking into the arts tough. Megan is clearly close to her heart.
The whole cast help keep us involved. Dornan has a similar energy to the young Jodie Foster; her Megan is both knowing and ethereal (it’s as if she’s constantly jiggling magic beans in her pockets). O’Neill is also supple and sympathetic in a tricky role.
To be honest, the script doesn’t quite hang together. It’s supposed to be elliptical and discordant, but too many of the facts don’t add up and some of the red herrings are a real cheat.
Gregg is a storyteller still finding her feet. But what a pleasure it is to make her acquaintance. She’s here today, going places tomorrow.
83mins, cert 15
