Top Spot

Emin’s first foray into (almost) full-length feature filmmaking doesn’t have anywhere near the same spark as some of her earlier, shorter video work. Neither has this experiment inspired Emin to think beyond well-trodden territory: her former home turf of Margate; teenage girls; bad sex; exploitative men; the paraphernalia of the English seaside. It starts promisingly with straight-to-camera conversations with a series of teenage schoolgirls, but then morphs into an often incoherent tour of her town, punctuated by equally indechiperable moments of real story and marred by a terrible use of digital video. As a minor companion piece to Emin’s existing work, it might have worked at a third of the length. But an hour? For diehard, uncritical Emin fans only.