NINA FOREVER
UK, 2015, 98 minutes, Colour.
Cian Barry, Abigail Hardingham, Mandeep Dhillon.
Directed by Chris Blaine, Ben Blaine.
Nina Forever is a fantasy for specialist tastes, a ghost story, a sexy ghost story, with an emphasis on very sexy. It won quite a number of awards at festivals which include after dark or underground… in their titles.
The film opens with a very long take of a car accident and somebody gradually rising from the road.
Then the film transfers to a story about Holly, studying to be a paramedic, rather earnest in her work, in a tangled relationship with a young man and breaking it off.
Part time she works in a supermarket and is attracted by Rob, an overqualified shelf stacker who gets into a fight with the supervisor. They talk, are attracted, and begin a relationship.
And that is where the trouble starts. Every time they have a sexual encounter, blood starts to appear and then Nina, Rob’s former girlfriend who was killed in the accident, appears covered in blood, naked, interfering all the time, insinuating herself into the relationship, with Rob as well as with Nina. There is a lot of cleaning up of rooms, scrubbing walls and mopping floors and putting bloodstained sheets and clothes in bins! And there are some kinky moments with tatoos from printing press sets.
This particular procedure is repeated many times, Holly getting exasperated, agreeing to go with Rob to Nina’s parents for a meal – and some background to Nina’s parents, the father taking off time to write a novel (not very good at all) and the mother wondering whether she could walk out after 30 years. Eventually, Rob has a meal with them and the parents turn on him telling them how much time and energy they have given to help him overcome Nina’s loss while they resent the fact that he has lived.
Holly tries to take on with someone else – but Nina appears, as she does when Holly and Rob go to a holiday house for a quiet weekend.
Holly does good work as a paramedic, comforting a wounded woman and keeping her alive. Rob keeps revisiting Holly.What will happen? Probably only those who have really been absorbed by this film will wonder.
