Initially interesting but heartsinkingly pointless, this brooding Brit indie takes us on a journey to nowhere. Accomplished TV director Gareth Tunley makes his feature debut; as an actor, he has appeared in the films of Ben Wheatley, who has an executive producer credit here.
Like the Möbius strip that the screenplay invokes, this film finally leads us back to where we started without us gaining or learning anything very much along the way. The movie turns on an ambiguous question of reality and illusion, the full truth of which is exasperatingly withheld until the end.
Tom Meeten plays Chris, a troubled guy who has travelled from Manchester to London to help out a mate. Chris appears to be an ex-copper, giving his off-the-record assistance to a former detective colleague, Jim (Dan Skinner), concerning a horrible double murder. Taking advice from Jim’s wife Kathleen (Alice Lowe), a psychological profiler, he poses as someone with depression to visit a certain therapist (Niamh Cusack) and so steal the medical records of Jim’s prime suspect: Coulson (Rufus Jones). But these therapy sessions reveal another reality for Chris below the moody, melodramatic surface.
What the film evokes about depression and paranoia looks glib, and it feels like a film-school project.
