THE LEDGE
UK, 2023, 86 minutes, Colour.
Brittany Ashworth, Ben Lamb, Louis Boyer, Nathan Welsh, Anais Parello, David Wayman.
Directed by Howard J. Ford.
A British film with an American accent. British writer and director, British cast, all with American accents and American story, American characters.
This is a thriller with a mountain setting, the Italian Dolomites, with some spectacular sequences of the mountains, the surrounding terrain, and, especially of cliff faces and looking down from ledges to the valleys below.
A basic kind of plot. Two young women arrive to climb the mountain face, the first anniversary of the death in an accident of the partner and trainer of one of the women. Then four Americans arrive, friendly, loud. One of them, their leader, Josh (Ben Lamb) dominates the others, is allegedly engaged but has no difficulty in having affairs, is a macho chauvinist, and a pig in his misogynist attitudes and language and behaviour.
One of the girls is eager to have a drink with the men, the girl with the anniversary reluctant. Josh makes advances on the flirtatious girl, she resisting, he attacking, almost raping her, his friends pushing him off – however, in her flight, she falls over a cliff. The four determine what to do, Josh bashing her with a stone and urging the others to do the same.
The audience is surprised, but there is a back story from their childhood, their bullying someone and injuring him, their denial, and Josh’s power over them, rounding them up each year for mountain climbing. They are full of unwarranted entitlement, jobs in business and in politics.
The development of the plot is that the other girl, Kelly, Brittany Ashworth, films all of this activity and they go in pursuit, she beginning to climb the mountain face, they trying to pursue but taking an alternate route although one of them falls, leg injured, and, offscreen, killed by Josh. The main action of the film is Kelly climbing to a small ledge under the big ledge where the men have camped, their taunting her, wanting the camera, one being lowered down to confront her, then his being killed, the other, the weakest of the group, getting the camera but trying to defend her – and Josh setting him alight and lowering him down in front of Kelly.
A lot of the time shows Kelly with survival skills, discovering a hanging tent, then being threatened by the men.
Ultimately, of course, the confrontation between Josh and Kelly, knives, and her vanquishing him.
So, that’s it.
