Film

This downbeat indie mystery about various mismatched strangers hanging out in a cliff-top hotel somewhere on the edge of our island is from Carol Morley, whose success last year with the moving doc ‘Dreams of a Life’ has summoned this 2010 drama down from the shelf marked ‘unreleased’.

To call the mood wintry is an understatement: as snow falls outside in this eerie location, our cast of the dispossessed reveal their problems to each other. Ageing and sad Wendy (Marjorie Yates) confides in the Polish cleaner (Anna Wendzikowska); feisty Sophie (Nichola Burley) turns on Phillip (Joe Dempsie) after arranging to meet him over the internet; and quiet Elly (Maxine Peake) fixates on a past tragedy and only tentatively warms to the charms of well-meaning musician Glen (Paul Hilton).

The surreal air and spooky use of the hotel as a theatre for a play on the dispossessed is welcome, but the script and acting are lacking, and the effect is more episodic than it should be. Admirable but not entirely convincing.