Worth: $12.50
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Cast:
Rory Farrelly, Peter Clarke, Ian Taylor
Intro:
Providing a grounded story, wrapped in a dreamlike aesthetic, Electrician may frustrate with how slowly Conway shows his cards, but it’s still an impressive debut.
There’s a quiet contemplation tinged with remorse in Electrician, a new film by British director Steve Conway. Utilising a cast of non-actors, the film follows Mark (Rory Farrelly), a recluse living in a sparse council flat in London. Deliberately trying to avoid forming friendships with his fellow electricians, Mark spends his day keeping his head down till it’s time to go home and watch TV. When a persistent cough has the potential to be something much worse, Mark takes steps to reunite with the family he left behind a few years previously.
Electrician is a deliberately slow-paced film. Conway saturates the audience in Mark’s tedious day-to-day existence for a long time before anything truly begins to happen. Around him, his colleagues chat among themselves, share pornography and try to work out what Mark’s real deal is. During these scenes, through its non-actors, the film takes on a pseudo-documentary quality and often brings a sense of levity to the sombre tone.
There’s a reluctance to call Mark the hero of his own story. As he gets ever closer to his goal, Conway drops hints and rakes over the ashes of Mark’s previous life, hinting at a past that has led him to this lonely existence. While it works as a way to engage the audience after a languid opening, your mileage may vary on how you feel when Electrician fails to give you anything too concrete. Equally, the film’s resolution is sure to divide its audience. Is that inherently a bad thing? Absolutely not. Many a film has been built on an ending that pulls the rug out from under you at the very last second.
Providing a grounded story, wrapped in a dreamlike aesthetic, Electrician may frustrate with how slowly Conway shows his cards, but it’s still an impressive debut.
