This film is part of Rentals
Norfolk
A father and son dwelling in a remote wasteland wage a war against a gang of local revolutionaries, in Martin Radich’s unsettling rural drama.
Director: Martin Radich
Overview
A warped mercenary (Denis Ménochet) and his teenage son eke out a reclusive existence in a remote rural wasteland, staking out a potential hit against a gang of foreign revolutionaries who’ve settled in a nearby compound. When the boy falls for one of the girls at the commune his fractured relationship with his father is tested to the limits, only to be further compounded by an intervention from his maternal grandparents.
Martin Radich’s striking debut feature completely upturns the conventions of British rural drama, presenting the Norfolk countryside as a strange alien landscape, home to festering blood-feuds and complex tangles of relationships. It makes for a fascinating comparative study with The Goob (2015), which utilises similar Fenlands locations and a father-son dynamic to completely different effect. While Guy Muyhill’s film is firmly situated in Britain’s social-realist traditions, Radich’s experimental style owes more to the European sensibility of Bruno Dumont or Lars Von Trier.
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