RARE BEASTS
UK, 2019, 87 minutes, Colour.
Billie Piper, Leo Bill, Kerry Fox, Toby Woolf, David Thewlis, Lily James.
Directed by Billie Piper.
Small-budget British film written and directed by singer-actress, Billie Piper. She also stars as the central character. It might be seen as a slice of British life, dysfunctional family life, strange and skewed relationships, critical of contemporary media. And it moves often into the surreal, voices and people’s heads, imagine sequences, artificially staged sequences.
Many audiences will wonder what to make of it – but, for those puzzled, it is worth checking the IMDb bloggers who declared that they loved the film.
How to describe it? Here is the tagline: An anti rom-com about Mandy, a career-driven single mother, who falls in love with the charming, traditionalist Pete. Perhaps it is helpful to see it as an anti-rom-com and speculate on what that might mean. However, with the focus on the character Pete, in the film he exhibits practically no charm.
Then there is a synopsis outline: Mandy is a mother, a writer, a nihilist. Mandy is a modern woman in a crisis. Raising a son in the midst of a female revolution, mining the pain of her parents separation and professionally writing about a love that no longer exists, she falls upon a troubled man, Pete, who is searching for a sense of worth and belonging. —Canon y mus
and, counterbalancing this, an IMDb blogger comment: I couldn’t keep up. I think I understood the concept, that it was meant to show her interpretation of the unfiltered versions of what was inside peoples heads rather than the external versions of what they actually say. But with that in mind, I still don’t know what this film was trying to portray. (Too clever for its own good, kevinmorice25 May 2021)
This reviewer had difficulty with the character of Mandy, puzzling, sometimes sympathetic, sometimes wilful, sometimes cruel. And there is a young son, antagonising his mother, prone to screaming fits in public places. And, Pete, despite declarations of being religious, having God-doubts, wanting to marry Mandy (which requires a lot of puzzling about this by the audience).
But, this reviewer was far more interested in the portrayal of Mandy’s parents, their personalities, living in the same house yet antagonistic, the reasons for their breakup, the mother with terminal cancer, the father having to come to terms with this as well as their trying to understand their daughter and care for their grandson. They are played by Kerry Fox and David Thewlis and, again perhaps for older audiences, make watching the film is somewhat worthwhile. (And there is a cameo by Lily James, always attractive, in a wedding sequence.)
