The Dinner After

Watching Angela come home for dinner when I am not seeing my own parents this Mother's day due to Covid precautions adds a bit of depth. They've made her favourite too, roast chicken here, roast beef at the home I grew up in. The same potatoes, and I'd wager my dad would be opening a bottle of a big red. Though that wine with chicken is a bit of a mismatch, and it's not the only one.

That's a layer of additional discomfort in a film made of uneasy conversations. Misophonia and more, "we can't go back to normal" but this starts somewhere around that. In the wood panelled hall and the rain on the windows, on the doorbell and the glint of chintz. The suburban uncanny will become something starker, a grand guignol by the dashboard light.

You can't spell catharsis without 'car' and 'sis' and The Dinner After isn't shy about setting out its route to that. The mechanics of it though, the bits of craft in flow of read and tilt of head are indicators of technical skill from all involved. You also can't spell it without 'cast' and director Matty Crawford and writer Paul Carey have been lucky with theirs.

Lucy Doyle's Angela fits well with Joanna Brookes and John Ramm as mum and dad. Brookes has one of those familiar faces, she's had four different roles on UK TV staple Doctors and five on The Bill, Ramm a similar CV though he only scores two and three respectively. They're perfectly placed to be the right kind of cosy, in what will become a tea-time terror. Fern Deacon as sister Lauren has experience in genre in The Enfield Haunting, plenty of TV credits herself but is only just on the scoreboard with one role in Doctors. While the weight of reaction falls mostly on Doyle, she's in good company in this.

A product of the National Film & Television School, that institution's role is an important one in the ever distorted ecosystem of short film production. It's also produced dozens of household names, though as movies move ever more digital the fact that its acronym is now fungible takes some of the certainty out of searching for their works. As this is a student film, there's not much else in the credits of those behind the camera, but on this evidence they'll be a worthy addition to a canon that includes literally hundreds of nominees and award winners. This is a simple tale, simply done, but strong for it. The secret of good roast potatoes might not be completely explained here, but I know it - it's to treat the appropriate elements properly, to turn up the heat and wait. Something that The Dinner After does too. One might suggest that there's further secrets in the use of flesh, that processes of rendering and consumption and an amount of roughness to create something crisp.