aqeel
Rupert Jones harks back to the golden age of paranoid dramas with a disturbing tale that makes up for shaky plotting with an angst-ridden mood and classy cast
upert Jones directs his brother Toby in this downbeat, gloomily claustrophobic British psychological drama-thriller that could have come straight from the 1960s. It puts us inside the prison cell of the main character’s mind and, in time-honoured style, begins to blur the distinction between what’s real and what isn’t.
There’s an excellent sense of location here, along with very good actors giving very good performances, making up for the film’s twist ending, which is a bit exasperating as well as not entirely watertight in terms of consistency
Carl (Jones) is a troubled man working as a gardener and living on his own in a council block, having just been released from prison. He has a difficult relationship with his mother Aileen – an excellent portrayal by Anne Reid – who to Carl’s dismay is planning to come and visit him. All this is complicated by an internet date that Carl has set up: a rendezvous with Abby (Sinead Matthews) whose designs on Carl are not entirely clear.
At its best, Kaleidoscope is like an unsettling dream featuring an Escher staircase that plunges infinitely and vertiginously downwards.
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There may be no better actor alive to play a socially maladroit misfit than Toby Jones. It’s a fact of which his brother Rupert Jones also seems to be aware, since he’s written and directed a terrific vehicle for him. A dark psychological thriller clearly influenced by Alfred Hitchcock (who Jones played so memorably in The Girl), Kaleidoscope, also starring veteran British actress Anne Reid (The Mother), provides juicy opportunities for its leads to deliver tour-de-force performances — and they don’t disappoint.
The central character, the middle-aged Carl (Jones), lives on an upper floor of the sort of nondescript middle-income, high-rise apartment building in which you know bad things happen. And they certainly do, as Carl finds out when he discovers the corpse of a young woman in his bathroom. How she got there constitutes the central mystery of the film that takes delight in confounding viewers’ narrative expectations.
Shortly into the proceedings, we see ex-con Carl welcoming online date Abby (Sinead Matthews) to his drab apartment. Abby represents a distinct contrast to her unassuming host clad in a tacky shirt that he’s borrowed from a friendly neighbor (Cecilia Noble). Vivacious, a hard drinker and a smoker, she invites Carl to dance but he can only manage to stiffly move his body in various directions.
Not long afterwards, Carl receives a visit from his mother, Aileen (Reid), with whom he clearly doesn’t have the best of relationships. The ensuing encounter, not surprisingly, doesn’t go at all well, with the hostile Carl angrily reacting to his mother’s attempts to be conciliatory.
“Maybe I should take you both out, for a treat,” Aileen offers when Carl tells her that he’s seeing someone.
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