A struggling Cornish fisherman's resentment of change and rich Londoners reaches boiling point in Mark Jenkin's BAFTA-winning debut feature.
"Shooting in black-and-white with a spring-wound 16mm Bolex and processing the film himself, Jenkin's work defies easy categorisation. The formally composed and classically edited imagery invoke Soviet silent cinema. Post-synch dialogue and stylised performances hark back to British educational films and kitchen sink dramas of the '50s and '60s. Its atmosphere of simmering violence is reminiscent of Straw Dogs (1974). Yet for all its intoxicating retro trappings Bait is urgently and powerfully modern, especially in the context of Brexit." (Sydney Film Festival)
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If the plotting is somewhat slight, heavily reliant on the repetitive, quotidian banality of its cove setting, it’s elevated by Jenkins’ tactile technique, which communicates the sense that he’s spent long days and nights lugging around a Bolex, hand-processing 16mm stock and sweating it out over a Steenbeck to get his vision on-screen. This isn’t the fastidiously manicured A24 grime-chic of The Lighthouse.
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The weirdness of Bait can't be overestimated, like FW Murnau directing an episode of EastEnders.
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Jenkin continues both his celebration of hand-made filmmaking and his chronicling of Cornish communities under threat from the modern world. It's a combination at once nostalgic and angrily contemporary. And it happens to involve some ravishing cinema.
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The surface plot has the stark feel of classic neorealism, but there are more interesting layers going on below the scuffed surface as Jenkin detours into experimental montage technique, Guy Maddin-style retro pastiche and English folk-horror tropes.
Full reviewBait (2019) is available to stream in Australia now on Google Play and Apple TV and SBS On Demand.
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