Two bungalows with a shared partition, a dog, and a couple of Oscar nominees at the top of their formidable games: Paul Andrew Williams’s pared-back and bruising three-hander is a realist drama with deep undercurrents that whirlpool into a denouement you will not see coming.
On a nondescript street in an unnamed town a few metres from a set of traffic lights that seem forever stuck on red, Brenda Blethyn’s elderly, arthritic pensioner Elsie muddles along with a life, assisted by a series of box-ticking private carers and the occasional call from her distant, middle-aged son John (W1A’s Jason Watkins).
Those comings and goings are observed by her wiry, sardonic neighbour Colleen (Andrea Riseborough). The distance between these two lonely souls – a stretch of lawn with a lone splash of colour provided by Elsie’s flowerbed – shortens in increments as Colleen and her beefy bull terrier Sabre pile over to help with the shopping and pick up the slack. Soon, Elsie is providing that most British sign of welcome – sticking the kettle on.
Blethyn is a two-time Oscar nominee and Riseborough, of course, earned one as For Leslie’s working-class alcoholic, and they are both absolutely stellar as two strangers finding a gentle connection. Both communicate different forms of brittleness – physical for one, psychological for the other – with immense skill, but leave space for a third kind: the idea that their connection is also alarmingly fragile. Colleen’s manner and lack of back story plant the idea that she might not be all she seems. The sudden arrival of John, nursing guilt at not doing more for his mum and jealous that Colleen is filling the gap, triangulates the dynamic in unnerving ways.
Dragonfly is a powerfully striking experience
Williams, whose debut London to Brighton beat Ben Wheatley and Gerard Johnson to the scuzzy indie neo-noir punch, has a passion for genre that tugs away at this film’s sleeve like its lovable hound (shout out to canine thesp Dixie). Call it ‘Mike Leigh with guns and blades’ but desperation and a lack of other options tends to draw his put-upon Brits inexorably towards violence. It worked a treat in his 2006 BAFTA-nominated breakthrough and brutal, grimy underworld thriller Bull.
Here, though, the tonal shift threatens to overbalance the delicate human drama that came before – despite the foreshadowing The Substance composer’s Raffertie’s dark interludes score and some unsettling camerawork from cinematographer Vanessa Whyte. Sure, one jump scare nearly sent me through the ceiling, but the themes explored earlier – the failure of social and mental health care, the improvised consolations of community – get lost in the shocks.
All the same, for a study of human connection at its most honest and affecting, with two remarkable lead performances, Dragonfly is a powerfully striking experience.
In UK and Ireland cinemas now.