Cinema Review: Mammal


Posted April 2, 2016 in Cinema Reviews

Mammal

Director: Rebecca Daly

Talent: Rachel Griffiths, Barry Keoghan, Michael McElhatton, Johnny Ward

Release Date: 1st April 2016

 

Margaret (Griffiths), estranged from her husband after their divorce and bereaved from the tragic drowning of their son Patrick, finds herself fascinated with a young homeless delinquent (Keoghan) after finding him beaten up in an alleyway. For reasons unclear she takes him in as a rent-free lodger, seemingly aware that Joe – who is about as gracious a houseguest as a feral cat – steals from her wallet at every opportunity and is generally suspicious and distrustful of her hospitality. Her willingness to be initially taken advantage of stems, it is implied, from the profound despair which encumbers her soul and seeps out of her pores as she autopilots though her dull and mostly solitary routine.

 

Rebecca Daly’s film revolves around one woman’s psychic pain, painting a bleak and atmospheric portrait using lingering pan shots and careful sound-editing to create a heavy, ambiguous atmosphere. The quiet cacophony of background sound – the drip of a tap, the rustle of paper – is brought to the forefront, filling the silences between the sparse yet weighty dialogue. Daly invokes a water motif consistently throughout the film with Griffith’s character often seen wiping her face under a shower head, languishing in a bath, swimming in the sea or sitting foetal underneath the water’s depths. In these settings her stolid veneer is shucked off to reveal her true pain-choked self, ashen and corpse-like due to her almost necrotic emotional turmoil. In conjunction with the tension between Keoghan and Griffiths – which teeters between Oedipal and familial yet never settles into anything which can be explicitly defined – Mammal is a fraught yet elegantly ambivalent feature. This film won’t offer its viewers any sense of satisfying progression or closure, but it will make for deliciously sensory, beautiful and emotive viewing.

Words: Eva Short

NEWSLETTER

The key to the city. Straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter.

SEARCH

National Museum 2024 – English

NEWSLETTER

The key to the city. Straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter.