Ruth Wilson & Sean Bean Head Down A ‘Dark River’ For Clio Barnard [BFI London Film Fest Review]

For the past few decades, gritty arthouse British movies have invariably been an urban affair: from Mike Leigh to “Nil By Mouth” and “Trainspotting”, to “Kidulthood” and “Red Road,” almost every element of contemporary city life in the U.K. has been mapped. But there’s been an interesting trend in the last year or so as filmmakers have finally headed out into the countryside, with a number of the most notable films of the last year looking at the difficulties of rural farm life.

First came Hope Dickson Leach’s superb “The Levelling,” then came Francis Lee’s gorgeous “God’s Own Country” – both marking their directors as some of the brightest new talents to emerge out of the U.K. in recent years. And now, an already-promising filmmaker puts on her wellies and heads out to the farm, with Clio Barnard (“The Arbor,” “The Selfish Giant”) and her third movie, “Dark River.” It’s her first effort in over four years, but sadly it’s not quite the triumphant return we were hoping for – although there is plenty to admire.

“Inspired by” Rose Tremain’s novel “Trespass” (it was initially a straight-up adaptation before mutating into something else), “Dark River” begins with Ruth Wilson’s Alice working as a sheep shearer on a farm, something she’s clearly been doing for years (we’ll later learn that she’s been doing “the circuit,” travelling regularly to Norway and New Zealand for work). But she’s to return home shortly: her father (Sean Bean) has recently died, and the family farm in Yorkshire was promised to her.

But when she returns, her brother Joe (Mark Stanley, most recognizable as one of the Night’s Watch on “Game Of Thrones”) is a bit staggered to see her. She’s been away half her lifetime, and she didn’t return when her father was dying, to her brother’s disgust. And he’s even more perturbed when she announces that she’ll be applying for tenancy of the farm and wants to shake up the methods he’s used to, beginning a struggle for control all the more heightened by a trauma in their past.

Barnard doesn’t beat around the bush when it comes to the reveal: the film is littered with flashbacks and near-hallucinatory glimpses of Bean (interestingly in a near-silent role), which almost immediately reveal that Alice was sexually abused by her father after their mother’s death. The film’s greatest asset is the way that it’s cut: the past and present bleed into each other throughout, pushing through the sense of how her history unbalances and haunts her. Indeed, it’s in every sense except the literal, a ghost story.

Thus, it’s formally interesting then (and well-shot, by Adriano Goldman, DP of “The Crown” and “Sin Nombre”), but it’s the content that’s a little familiar here. “The Selfish Giant” wasn’t a blindingly original story, but it had a specificity to it that made it stand out as something special. It’s not Barnard’s fault that she’s found similar material to Leach and Lee’s films, but her setting feels rather less lived-in and authentic when it goes over similar beats and locations (in part, it might be a problem of casting: Wilson’s a great actress and is good here, but also a little miscast – feeling a bit too RADA in places. And appearances from other familiar faces like “Game Of Thrones” actor Joe Dempsie, distract more than they add to the film).

And as far as the Sam-Shepard-in-the-Dales psychodrama of the story itself, it too feels a bit recycled somehow. Brushing against cliche and heading towards a destination that, like all tragedy is inevitable, it never feels particularly interesting to get to. The idea of a film examining the ripples of trauma later in life is a great one, but the story being told here can’t support it as well as the form.

It’s still evidently the work of a very talented filmmaker and is certainly never bad, but it also never lives up to its potential. Barnard has a long career ahead of her, but “Dark River” seems destined to be remembered, years now, as a minor work in her filmography. [C+]

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