The third film from Clio Barnard (following The Arbor and The Selfish Giant), Dark River sensitively explores the way a traumatic memory can seep through a life in the same way that poisoned groundwater can taint a piece of land. Following the death of her father, Alice (Ruth Wilson, compelling and uncomfortably raw) returns to her family farm for the first time in 15 years. The tenancy, she believes, is hers to claim. But what she finds is a failing business, skittering vermin and a brother who is not about to hand over his home.
Joe (Mark Stanley) has his own troubles: a rage that is released the moment he uncorks the booze, which is most of the time. But for Alice it’s deeper. The ghosts of her past – specifically of the father who abused her – pile into her already troubled psyche. The cracks are visible even before she comes home. When a fellow sheep shearer gives her arm a comforting pat, she recoils from the touch as if it’s a jolt from an electric fence.
Moments of kinship with her brother – they share the same dour loyalty to the land – soon deteriorate. Heated debates over farming technique crackle with the threat of violence. Water is an ever-present motif, from the river where the younger Alice shared a covert kiss with a local lad, to the rain that lashes the land in a melodramatic, climactic downpour. This is just one of the elements that the film shares with Hope Dickson Leach’s The Levelling, both of which feature young women struggling to keep their hands on the earth that, for better or worse, shaped them. Ultimately, the strident tone of Dark River’s final act makes this the less effective of the two.
