Dir: Guy Myhill | Cast: Liam Walpole, Sienna Guillory, Oliver Kennedy | UK Drama | 90′
In this enigmatic debut, Guy Myhill evokes the open spaces of the Norfolk countryside veiled in golden summery softness -wild flowers, drifting corn – and steeped in a an unsettling coming of age story, that pits a young man’s burgeoning sexuality against that of his mother’s boorish boyfriend – an avid stock-car racing champion and local grower.
Simon Tindall’s ethereal camera-work captures the rough and ready allure of this farming landscape and the gutsy inhabitants recalling that motorcycle opening sequence of Lawrence of Arabia with soft-focus art house twist contrasted with a gutsy song selection including Donna Summer. This is social realism that bristles with sexual tension and dreamy awakenings from childhood to young adulthood in the Fens, teasing with an enigmatic storyline that weaves through the fields but then departs in a different direction through never quite reveals itself.
The Goob is newcomer Liam Walpole who lives with his single mother Janet (Sienna Guillory) and her vicious partner in a run down shack of a roadside cafe Gene Womack dislikes the boy and makes no bones about showing it. Matters worsen when the Goob and his brother right the car off in a boy-racing moment, resulting in forced labour on the beet farm that threatens to curtail his social life. He does however meet hired farm-hand Elliott (Oliver Kennedy) and Eva (Marama Corlett) another picker who takes a shine to him during an impromptu midnight party in one of Gene’s fields.
This is a story that brims with intrigue and erotic tension not only between the Goob and Eva, but also in other enigmatic subplots where there’s a constant suggestion that Gene (a spiteful, mincing Harris) is drawn to other female characters and quite why Janet is involved with him remains a mystery. The intensity of the racing fraternity adds a rough machismo to the narrative, placing it firmly in Swaffham and the locale and the cast is almost entirely drawn from Norfolk. Liam Walpole has a gangly vulnerability about him which brings a unique appeal and gentleness to the otherwise hard-bitten, rough-edged Harris. MT