SHELL (2012)

Cast

Plot

An expansion of director Scott Graham's 2007 short of the same name, Shell is an austere, sombre drama set in the remote Scottish Highlands where the title character and her father run an isolated garage, seldom receiving customers. Much of the film revolves around their curious co-dependent relationship, brought about by a combination of suffocating loneliness, infirmity and grief, and how its parameters come to be shifted with the infrequent arrival of interlopers. Structured as a series of vignettes, it's a slow-burn almost in the manner of Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse which, in spite of its narrative slightness and occasional lapses into galling symbolism, is lifted by a clutch of nuanced performances and cinematographer Yoliswa Gärtig's eye for capturing a kind-of poetry in the harsh coldness of the film's setting. (JB)