‘Game of Thrones’ actress Ellie Kendrick is outstanding in this micro-budget British indie about a trainee vet returning home to her dad’s dairy farm in the south west in testing circumstances. Not only is the place still cleaning up after the floods on the Somerset Levels, there’s a threat of bovine TB , and – most painful of all – her brother has just died from a shotgun blast. Kendrick’s eminently sensible character brims with indignation, and has a history with her bluff, whisky-swigging ex-military dad (veteran character actor David Troughton absolutely nailing it).
But as the circumstances behind the recent tragedy come to light, what emerges is a drama about the corrosive effects on a household where pride is everyone’s default mode. Kendrick, uptight to the point of rage, really lives it, but first-time writer-director Hope Dickson Leach ensures we get the wider picture of a troubled landscape and a hard-pressed farming economy. A somewhat dour, slightly clenched viewing experience perhaps, but delivered with admirable insight, control, and nuanced subtlety by all concerned. It stays in the mind long afterwards.
