CORDELIA

UK, 2019, 91 minutes, Colour.

Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Johnny Flynn, Joel Fry, Ryan Kelly, David Leon, Alun Armstrong, Catherine McCormack, Michael Gambon.

Directed by Adrian Shergold.

Probably the first word to describe Cordelia would be “enigmatic”. It is most definitely enigmatic.

The film is sometimes billed as a horror film but it is really not using much horror material. Rather, this is the story of a traumatised woman (suggestions of trauma in the terrorist bomb blasts in London, 2005). It is 12 years later. She lives with her twin sister and the sister’s boyfriend. She is under studying the role of Cordelia in King Lear.

The film is a star vehicle for Antonia Campbell-Hughes who co-wrote the film with the director, Adrian Shergold, a veteran of filmmaking and television series including Morse and Vera.

The brief film focuses on Cordelia over a few days, suggestions about her fearfulness, her being upset when her sister and boyfriend go away for the weekend, wandering the streets of London and encountering, briefly, an old friend, played by David Leon. But, the main focus is on her protecting herself in her flat, caring for her cat. And there is the playing of the cello by the musician upstairs, Frank. The musician is played by Johnny Flynn who is present in most of the film. He has a coffee with Cordelia, travels on the underground, has a drink with her but escapes from seeing someone he knows, plays the cello for her. However, it seems he has been stalking her, photographing her, and she discovers the photos on his phone.

When they return home, he offers to play for her, she gets dressed seductively in her sisters, approaches Frank who is more than willing, eager, for a sexual encounter. However, it would seem in moments of madness, with the encounter and her discovery, she stabs him, pretending to call an ambulance, he pleading for his life.

At the end, Frank has disappeared.

And, so the enigma. And the main question is raised. Is all this happening in Cordelia’s mind? How much of it is happening in reality (with the film opening on the underground and Cordelia giving her seat to a blind man whom she sees in her flat, photographs, but finds he is not there)? What is the nature of her personality? Is her sister real or not or just her alter ego? And is Frank a projection of her psyche?

Glenn Kenny, the Roger Ebert website, notes: ‘’shamelessly derivative and willfully obscure’. The derivative aspect is linking this film to details of character and episodes in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion. He also suggests that the intention of the film is delivered so open that the audience will create its own solution and ending.

A warning that audiences eager to see the film after noting the cast. Most of them have very small roles, Joel Fry, David Leon, Michael Gambon in one scene as an eccentric neighbour, and audiences looking at the King Lear rehearsal, possibly managing to glimpse Alun Armstrong and Catherine McCormack.