Strays review

As suburban social horror filtered through a characteristically black lens, the comparisons between early writer-director Nathaniel Martello-White the fireplaces and Jordan Peele go out AND We they are inevitable. In fact, the best comparison would probably be Netflix’s recent offerings. I came for AND His home; All three together form an eye-opening home invasion trilogy that reflects and exposes the profound flaws that permeate British society. Ultimately, Hammer-White’s film, for better and sometimes for worse, is its own beast, a sometimes sharp, often fragmentary exploration of social (im)mobility, the rot rotting beneath the surface called civil society and internalized racism.

When we first meet Cheryl (Ashley Madekwe), she leaves a note for her husband on the fridge in their council house, leaving behind an unfulfilling life that makes her sure of one thing: she wants more. She leaves, the camera pans out, and then we catch up with her 20 years later, only now Cheryl is Neve, a trophy wife living in a white suburb who listens to Beethoven drive to her comfortable job with her children (Maria Almeida and Samuel Paolo Piccoli) private school.

Before long, though, we see that the initial change in scale is just one of the many ways in which Neve’s horizons have been superficially broadened. Her wigs may be as pristine as she wants, but she still itches like hell when they remind her of the curls they hide; she can afford tip-free lunches and throw lavish galas, but the other moms don’t deign to say that she’s “practically” one of them; and she’ll still spend her mornings powdering herself to blend in with the white suburbia, switching codes so hard that her cold facade cracks whenever her husband says the word “Black” aloud or her two sons dare show their their pride. of her color. Neve is always a misstep (or real move, more accurately) from exposing yourself; the arrival of two ghosts from her past only intensifies the loss of her.

Divided into four time-jumping chapters, the real plot here is just a few holes away from a triphobic nightmare, with who, where, when and how best not to think too much about it. But while Hammer-White’s heavy-handed script leaves little room to really address Snow’s past, Ashley Madekwe’s intense, internalized performance three-dimensionalizes an otherwise too symbolic character. With a quiver in her jaw, a twitch in one eye that stifled tears, a consonant she forgot to cut out, Madekwe indelibly captures the grueling struggle of a woman who has perfected the art of fitting in nearly everywhere but on her own skin. . Cinematographer Adam Scarth’s claustrophobic close-up camerawork and Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch’s combative score, which never quite matches the rhythms Neve has tried to impose on her life, perfectly enhance Madekwe’s performance .

Like the two enigmatic figures who bind Neve to her past life, rocks Short-lived Bukky Bakray and newcomer Jorden Myrie follow Madekwe’s lead, reading between the lines to find the deeper truths of their characters. Outward embodiments of Cheryl’s guilt and Neve’s shame, Abi (Bakray) and Marvin (Myrie) nimbly deal with deep grief and palpable anger, any revelations that emerge about them suggesting a bolder version of this story.

As messy and loosely drawn as the journey to the film’s home invasion climax may be, outside of the main trio, you’ll have a hard time remembering the names of the other characters you meet here, let alone yourself. probably for the better) – it all builds up to one of the most amazing final frames you’ll see all year. At the end of a film that most frustrates not because of a lack of ideas, but because of Hammer-White’s struggle to find a way to bring them into focus, the fireplacesThe final frame is a punchline so wickedly delivered and precisely engineered that it will leave you grinning and grinning in equal measure.