With a title like Wreckers you know that no matter how solid and seemingly perfect a relationship appears, something or someone is going to shatter it.
Married couple Dawn (Claire Foy) and David (Benedict Cumberbatch) have moved out of the city to the rural village where David grew up to start a family.
It's all very idyllic: doing up an old cottage, chickens in the garden, singing in the local church choir and then David's brother Nick (Shaun Evans) turns up. Nick is in the army and has done active service in the Middle East.
There is an immediate and obvious close bond between the two brothers who haven't seen each other for a long time. Nick suffers terrible nightmares and is prone to sleep walking and David is a adept at dealing with these episodes - something he has learnt from the past.
The longer Nick stays the more of the past - the brothers childhood - is brought up fuelling a growing tension between the siblings and threatening to expose the lies in Dawn and David's own relationship. The problem is exacerbated by the reigniting of old friendships with former school friends who still live in the village.
This is a gentle, slowly unraveling film which examines love, rivalry and betrayal. Foy and Cumberbatch make for a natural and compelling couple which is the lynch pin of the film, a sunshine that is slowly engulfed in the darkness of lies and deceit. Both give wonderfully subtle performances often played out in the tightest of close ups and they have able support from the rest of the cast.
Wreckers is evocative and beguiling, another cracking low budget, independent British film and I hope it gets the wide distribution it deserves.
I'm going to give it 80% but you'll have to take my word for it, this being its first airing and part of the London Film Festival, it hasn't been widely reviewed and therefore doesn't have any IMDb, Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes rating yet. It doesn't even have a trailer yet that's how fresh out of the can the screening was.
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