The War Zone

Scripted by Alexander Stuart from his own novel, Roth's ambitious and very decent directorial debut tells of a teenage boy's suspicions that his slightly elder sister (Belmont) is caught up in a sexual relationship with their father (Winstone); but is he just bored, confused and angry that the family left London for a remote Devon farmhouse? It's a tough, uncompromising movie, beautifully acted by all concerned (though one does wonder how the very different Winstone and Swinton, as the Earth Mother mum, ever got together in the first place), and imaginatively shot by Seamus McGarvey in broodingly dark 'Scope. A few scenes are perhaps needlessly and voyeuristically explicit, and it's not as emotionally affecting as it would like to be, but it's a confident, intelligent work for all that.