Norfolk

A movie just like a DeLorean, seemed like a good idea at the time. It's a complete shambles from start to finish, the only joy I got was knowing the director hasn't done another movie since.

Cinematography wildly overdone, script wildly underdone, acting so-so, verdict: film school end-of-year project.

A visceral energy pushes through this film as a juxtaposition of troubled histories bubble below the surface of mental and physical landscapes. This is a raw film with not only a brooding intensity around it but also containing an undercurrent of uncertainty, distrust and menace. Polarities of alienation and longing, love and sorrow permeate the principal characters in a setting which affords degrees of anonymity and distance. The film's spare and enigmatic aura gives space to the various relationships where time and past events impact on the present. It breaks boundaries and sets up new markers in creating situations where pursuit and emotion collide to produce fragile new directions. To ask whether this film works in a traditional sense is to miss the point. Here is a created work which punches at the margins, reminding the audience that there are still new ways to tell a story.

Some films are awful, it's transparently obvious what they're trying to do but they fail on every point. But some films are bad in a different way: it's completely unclear what the director had in mind. Or, perhaps the best way of explaining 'Norfolk' is not to discuss plot, character, or cinematic style; but rather to imagine what would happen if someone with neither talent nor a budget aspires to make a vaguely artistic, pschological thriller. The "so bad it's good" trope doesn't even apply here, as everything is so muddled as well as inept. This really does feel like a school film-club project; and one that fundamentally, teaches the lesson that making movies is hard. Don't do it, kids!

I had little idea what was going on, but I didn't really care either. No redeeming features anywhere to be found, a waste of time.