Tag Archives: drama

Reviews: The Pearl Comb

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The Pearl Comb,
Directed by Ali Cook,
Starring Beatie Edney, Clara Paget, Ali Cook, Simon Armstrong

Writer, director and actor Ali Cook’s intriguing short film arrives with a most-impressive list of awards garnered at forty international film festivals, including the Méliès d’Argent, as well as qualifying for the 2026 Academy Awards. Set in 1893, on the rugged coastline of the West Country, we see a middle-aged lady, Betty Lutey (Highlander’s Beatie Edney), fussing nervously with her hair and clothing as she awaits a visitor at her remote, coastal cottage.

It transpires her visitor is a young man, a doctor, who also happens to be related to her. Betty, it appears, has acquired something of a local reputation as a folk-healer, the sort of thing not unknown in rural areas of the period, and which would likely have remained just a local story, until it is widely reported that she cured a young lad of tuberculosis. The medical establishment (which in Victorian England means a lot of influential, wealthy, white, middle and upper class men, with, let us say, a pretty guarded interest in being the gatekeepers in regards to curing people), have sent Doctor Gregory Lutey (Ali Cook) to investigate.

The tale that Beatie spins is a fantastical one – she claims she didn’t so much cure the case of tuberculosis, at least not in the normal medical sense, she “healed” it, using her gift, which in turn was a gift from her late husband, Lutey (Simon Armstrong). Upright, Victorian medical man that he is, Gregory is rather sceptical of this claim. Betty recounts to him a tale of her late husband, how Lutey had gone foraging for medicinal plants but not come home one evening. Assuming he was drunk on local home-brew, she tracks him down a day later, sleeping in a barn, surrounded by bottles, but claiming not to have touched a drop. Instead he seems badly shaken, and recounts an incredible tale to his disbelieving wife.

Old Lutey tells her of hearing a strange singing from the rocky shoreline as he was foraging, and on following the sound finds the remarkable sight of a mermaid (Clara Paget suitably ethereal), sitting by a rock pool, fish tail and all. After being initially startled by the appearance of a human, the mermaid begins to speak to him, and then requests his help, offering gifts and wishes in return, such a riches, which she assumes all men want, but Lutey is happy to simply help her and doesn’t care about vast wealth. In fact the only thing that he can think of he’d like as a wish, is the ability to heal people of illness, especially his wife.

Of course, as any of us know, offers of services and wishes from any residents of the Otherworld should always be taken with caution – they always come attached with terms, not all of which are good for you. And that’s assuming he’s telling the truth – Betty is, understandably, not convinced, until he produces the pearl comb from the mermaid’s hair and demonstrates his healing ability.

At this point, Gregory is not exactly taken with this story – a fine yarn for the grandchildren, of course, but not a serious explanation for her supposed healing abilities that he, as a doctor, chosen to investigate this case, can accept seriously, even though he is related to her. In fact he’s quite dismissive of her, and of women in general, with all the scorn of a patriarchal Victorian man, sure of his place in the world and acknowledging nothing that science cannot explain (and certainly sure that there are strict places for what women can and cannot do).

While interesting, and very well-made, this could easily have moved into a predictable third act, but instead – well, no spoilers, of course, but suffice to say Cook brought together a satisfying conclusion, drawing on aspects of science, of folklore, and drawing inspiration from real history (such as the early women medical pioneers who had to fight to be recognised). The Pearl Comb packs a whole lot into such a short run time – it sets up its premise swiftly but assuredly, introduces its characters and then mixes elements of drama, horror and fantasy into a piece with some social commentary thrown in too, all in about twenty minutes – impressive.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: The Rule of Jenny Pen

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The Rule of Jenny Pen,
Directed by James Ashcroft,
Starring Geoffrey Rush, John Lithgow, George Henare

THE RULE OF JENNY PEN – Official Poster

Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush) is a judge, presiding over his court with a cold, superior air over all who come before him, both the criminals and even the families of the victims. In an opening sequence we see him not only tearing into a criminal in the dock before him, he then berates the mother of the victim (after she quietly repeats “thank you, thank you” after the guilty verdict), accusing her of failing in her duty to protect her child. As introductions go, it doesn’t exactly set us up to have much sympathy with Stefan, and yet it is this man we will largely follow throughout the film.

During his sentencing tirade, Stefan starts to struggle with his words, losing his thread, before collapsing. He has, in fact, suffered a stroke, right there in the courtroom, and the next we see of him, he is being moved into a care home for the elderly. He has gone from the feared and respected judge to a sad figure, now mentally and physically impaired, and alone (he appears to have no close family) in among the strangers of the elderly care home. That would be upsetting for any of us – the sudden loss of independence and dignity (no longer to even still take a bath alone, requiring help for even that task now) – but for an arrogant man like Stefan it feels even worse, leading him to rebuff any friendly overtures from other residents (such as his room-mate, Tony (George Henare), or the activities designed to keep the residents entertained and diverted.

But there is much worse to come, in the shape of Dave Creary (John Lithgow). Glimpsed at first in the background, a bedraggled looking, older man, who wears a child’s plastic dolly on one hand, like a glove puppet, and speaking through it (he refers to it as “Jenny Pen”), he gives every appearance of being a man lost in some form of dementia, eccentric but harmless. But he is anything but, and that dolly becomes an incredibly creepy totem.

Dave, it turns out, is not lost in mental illness, he is perfectly aware of his surroundings, and of his own desires and actions, and how exactly to move around his environment, which buttons to press, what he can get away with, how to stage things so that in the unlikely event anyone stands up and tries to tell the staff about his actions, he can make it look like they are the guilty party, shamelessly attacking a poor, demented, bewildered old man.

By night Dave creeps around the facility, terrifying the residents, without the staff ever catching on. The others are so cowed by him they no longer put up any fight, even Stefan’s room-mate Tony, a tough, former sporting star, is now too scared of this bully. Stefan, of course, will have none of it, but finds when he tries to get others to listen to his explanations of what is going on, nobody will listen to him. Added to this, his initial hope that he would only be here until he was rehabilitated is soon dashed as he learns his condition is actually likely to deteriorate further, and Dave knows this, gleefully explaining to him how he has watched others before him go this way, and just how much he will enjoy it.

This is simply a superb slice of compelling storytelling, drawing on elements of the horror and the thriller, and powered by having to absolutely powerhouse actors who are clearly relishing their roles and playing off one another. Frankly it’s worth the ticket just for watching Rush and Lithgow here, but director Ashcroft not only encourages such great performances from his stars, he crafts an increasingly uneasy, disturbing atmosphere, both the home itself (taking something so ordinary, mundane, almost dull, and making it into a disturbingly creepy place), and a personal sense of impending unease (Stefan’s increasingly failing faculties are depicted with some clever camera work and editing, in addition to Rush’s acting, that gives us a terrifying taste of what it is like for him as he realises he can no longer rely on his own mental acuity, Lithgow’s depiction of Dave’s sheer cruelty is terrfying).

Quite simply a superbly told tale, with two magnificent actors given roles they can really sink their teeth into.

The Rule of Jenny Pen will be released in cinemas from March 7th

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

All the world’s a stage…

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“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.” Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5

Four hundred years to the day since William Shakespeare shuffled off this mortal coil, a popular playwright in his own time, he may well have been just a footnote in literary history like so many others, and yet, partly due to the posthumously published First Folio collection in 1623, put together by his friends so that Will’s work would not be forgotten after his death. Could any of them have imagined that these would become part of the absolute canon of world literature, told and retold endlessly across the centuries, adapted to new mediums and new ages…

shakespeare folio portrait martin droeshout

(the portrait of Shakespeare from the First Folio, by Martin Droeshout)

“How many ages hence,
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over,
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!” Julius Caesar

Four hundred years on and Shakespeare’s works still suffuse not only the cultural heritage of Britain but, appropriately, given the name of his famous theatre, the Globe, so many lines entering the popular language, used even by those who have no idea they are quoting from the Bard. They’ve been adapted again and again into new media that Will could never have dreamed of, from radio productions beamed into our homes through the ether like some magic by Prospero to the glories of the silver screen, and re-interpreting his works and life as inspiration for new tales – witness Neil Gaiman’s remarkable use of Shakespeare several times in his magnificent Sandman comics, both the plays and the man and also looking at the act of artistic creation, the cost of crafting stories (using the medium of stories to examine stories…). I’ve been a bookseller for more than two decades, a reader all my life, and I know full well that of the many stories published each year some can go on to become hugely popular, bestsellers as we’d call them today, and yet ten or twenty years later even those bestselling writers can slip into out of print obscurity.

sandman_gaiman_vess_shakespeare_prospero

(One of the Shakespeare elements of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, from on of my favourite plays, The Tempest, Prospero and Miranda, artwork by the incomparable Charles Vess)

Save for a precious  fraction of all the authors who have ever been published – the Jane Austens, the Charles Dickens, the Cervantes, the Borges, the Walter Scotts, eternal Homer of course, Mark Twain. These remain in print, always re-read, across the world, loved and admired and passed on to other generations, translated into languages Shakespeare would never have heard uttered, read again even in nations which didn’t exist when Shakespeare walked the streets of Stratford. As Gaiman has Dream tell his version of Shakespeare, there are some stories which are simply forever, which will always need to be retold as long as human tells stories – and storytelling is in the very blood of humanity, we’ve been doing it since we sat around fires telling oral ballads and drawing on cave walls. Times change, but people are people and the best stories say something about our nature, about what it is to be human, and that makes them forever pertinent to any age. And of course they’re also just bloody good stories to enjoy!