Bait Review
★★★★☆
Tensions rise as a struggling fisherman clashes with an out-of-town family residing in his home village.
With its battered monochromatic visuals, the fraught Bait looks like a collection of reels that have been dragged around a car park covered in razor blades and thumbtacks. And then dragged some more for good measure.
The distinctive style of Mark Jenkin’s feature debut is a curious choice. A painstakingly handcrafted effort, harking back to the “good old days” but telling a modern story of troubled times, a swirling storm of inequality and gentrification. The legacy of politics and the “bigger picture” wash away hopes and dreams in even the most picturesque of rivieras.
Jenkin’s wholly unique take on trouble in paradise owes much to a terrific central performance from Cornish actor Edward Rowe, playing a man powerless to save the soul of his small fishing village. Rowe is fascinating to watch, his plight oddly relatable, spending much of the film’s lean 85-minute runtime wearing a face of quiet disgust that’s similar to watching a simmering pot slowly boil over.
It’s an uncomfortable but urgent modern fable, made by a man steadfast in his desire to combine unique storytelling with the physical act of filmmaking. It won’t be for everyone, but as first efforts go, Bait is remarkably impressive.
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