Direction: Mark Jenkin
Country: UK
From Mark Jenkin, the British director who positively puzzled us with the non-linear narratives of Bait (2019) and Enys Man (2022), Rose of Nevada takes us to a devastated fishing village where a rusty local boat reappears mysteriously in the harbor after has been given as lost at sea for 30 years. Its old crew has vanished, but the new one: local Nick (George MacKay) and newcomer Liam (Callum Turner) are ready to join a seasoned old skipper (Francis Magee). When they return ashore, they realize that a shift in time has occurred. Curiously and unfathomably, Nick loses his family while Liam gains a new one.
The imagery, in conjoint with the editing, is at once deeply unsettling and visually hypnotic. The frames are constantly infused with textures, patterns, and geometries, evoking a strange connection between past and present as well as between ghostly dreams and a harsh reality. If you’re looking for humor, you won’t find it here. Actually, Jenkin opts for the square format to amplify the story’s sense of suffocation and disorientation, plunging viewers into an oppressive and anxiety-inducing atmosphere from which they will not emerge unscathed.
Distinctively unnerving, Rose of Nevada is pure ritualistic spectacle, a mental exercise with a truly beautiful effect. It’s a psychological, highly atmospheric ghostly tale that, never becoming macabre, is as enigmatic and surprising as it is engrossing, confirming its author as one of the best things that happened to recent British cinema.
