Iona

Writer and director Scott Graham has made a glum, ponderous film which has few words and little plot. Some of the shots of the island of Iona are beautiful to look at but really this film is a waste of time.

Iona is a small island in the Inner Hebrides. It is a place of natural beauty with a strong religious and farming community. Returning to the island after some years away is Ruth Negga also called Iona with her teenage son Billy (Ben Gallagher) also called Bull. Iona is escaping an aggressive situation that led Bull to commit a violent act.

Iona's arrival dredges up a complicated past involving her kind of adopted father who also used to be her lover Daniel (Douglas Henshall) and his daughter Elisabeth (Michelle Duncan) who used to be best pals with Iona. Bull gets friendly with Iona's disabled daughter and is also attracted to the tight religious community that Iona once found suffocating.

Having myself been brought up in a small island community I can sense what Graham might had been aiming for but it was all so pensive and dull. I liked Negga's performance and there is a nice Celidh sequence with music and dancing.

Windswept moors, rugged crags, dangerous currents are captured in arresting cinematography, and thank goodness for these points of interest. High profile actors do their best to convey characters that whisper, glower and seethe. A maybe miracle in a barn, a possible 'murrrder' in glasgow, and a certain menace in the church are all devices that are painfully slowly stitched together in this dour, drab and ultimately fairly insubstantial tale.

Terrible in every way. Not sure where to begin. What was the point of this "story"?

Watching paint drying, grass growing come to mind as high octane pass times compared to this utterly boring effort.

What were they thinking?