Film Review - The End We Start From
Jodie Comer gives a superbly physical performance in Mahalia Belo's low-key but gripping adaptation of Megan Hunter's novel
The End We Start From is a compellingly bleak slab of dystopian sci-fi set in England slightly in the future. Climate change (presumably) has led to worse rainstorms that threaten to flood low-lying cities. Unfortunately, this means a heavily pregnant woman finds her birth coincides with a catastrophic flood, forcing her and her husband to up sticks from London to his parents’ place in the countryside.
In adapting Megan Hunter’s novel, screenwriter Alice Birch and director Mahalia Belo get top marks for this opening segment. As the nameless woman (simply credited as “Mother”, played with characteristic gusto by Jodie Comer) experiences contractions, the outside rain gets heavier. When her waters break, floods smash through windows, making her home uninhabitable. This sequence features swirling cameras, upside-down images, and stress-inducing chaos. The outside storm is a superb metaphor for the experience of having children. They crash into your life, painfully and messily, and things are never quite the same.
The woman’s husband (Joel Fry) hopes they can sit things out at his parents’ place. Initially, it looks as though they’ll be alright, with the parents in question (played by Nina Sosanya and Mark Strong) proving kind and supportive, having stocked up plenty of food, and being keen vegetable gardeners. But as we glean from background television and radio broadcasts, the displaced populations of flooded cities are getting hungry and lawless.
Harrowing incidents ensue, resulting in the young woman and her baby boy undergoing various desperate journeys to try and survive. Jodie Comer sells this aspect of the narrative entirely, delivering a strong performance that gets across the physicality of her gruelling ordeal. Ironically, we learn her character used to be terrified of death. But the presence of her son galvanises her, giving her something she would happily die to protect.
Much of the wider disaster is unseen, perhaps due to budgetary limitations, but Belo makes this a strength rather than a weakness, giving claustrophobic immediacy to the narrative by sticking with the mother’s point of view. Suzie Lavelle’s cinematography underscores this, utilising unforgiving landscapes to tremendous effect, whether bleak, rainswept moors, forests, or grey coastlands. The visual effect shots featuring flooded houses and cities are limited but well done, and the drama is much enhanced by Anna Meredith’s music score. In addition to Comer, there’s a strong supporting role for Katherine Waterston, playing another mother with a baby befriended along the way. Also, look out for a great bit part by Benedict Cumberbatch, as another distraught survivor, and another by Gina McKee, as a borderline cult-ish commune leader.
Whilst this film shares DNA with other dystopian films such as Children of Men (2006) and The Road (2009), The End We Start From is strong enough in its own right to warrant recommendation. I don’t think it is quite in the same league as the aforementioned titles, but nevertheless, Belo, Birch, and Comer deserve considerable credit for this low-key, grim but gripping piece of work.
(Originally published at Medium.)
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