21/06/2013 - Scottish Scott Graham’s debut film is extremely intense in its narrative and aesthetic

Shell [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is the first feature length film by Scottish Scott Graham. Graham made a short by the same name in 2007, which was also shot in the Highlands, which storyline had a similar theme. The feature film is being screened in competition at the 11^th Brussels Film Festival. Sober, subtle and powerful are a few of the adjectives that spring to mind when trying to describe this transition from short to long.

 Shell (Chloe Pirrie), the main character, has the name of a petrol station (convenient if only she worked in one), but when they joke about it, she prefers saying that shell is the beautiful object found in the sea - something she has probably never seen. Shell lives in the Scottish Highlands, in the middle of a landscape as extraordinary as it is devastating. It bowls tourists over but can be exasperating for those who live there.

Shell’s mother left a long time ago and left her with her father Pete (Joseph Mawle), a mechanic who suffers from epilepsy and hallucinations. At 17, she is not just bursting with hormones, she also is filled with a complete desire for physical and mental escape. What to do with her father though? How to confront the guilt, the ambiguity of the father-daughter relationship, and the fear of what lies behind the never-ending Highland roads? 

With very strong dramatic material, Graham paints an elaborate picture of an atypical teenager, which is neither voyeuristic nor simplistic. The screenplay relies on sober dialogues and allows for silences and body language to stand out from events. Shell and her father are surrounded by a cast of characters who momentarily deflect the unhealthy isolation in which they live, and end up intensifying the desire for a change, which is never spoken. Similarly to

Fish Tank [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Andrea Arnold
film profile]’s ending, by Andrea Arnold, when the change does come about, it leaves a bitter after taste, but looks to a future which hopes to be less suffocating. Produced by Brocken Spectre and Bard Entertainments, Shell is an intense film in its austerity and is the proof of how the old formula of a good screenplay, good actors and a good director enable a film to astonish its audience hours after it has ended, without having to rely on big budgets or special effects.

(Translated from Spanish)