Leave No Trace - Eastbourne’s Curzon Cinema to screen ‘Flawless’ movie which earned fabulous reviews in 2018
The work chosen is Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace which earned some of the best reviews of 2018 and was indeed named as the film of the year by the critic Mark Kermode (who described it as ‘flawless’, despite which it did not receive a wide release in this country.
Granik made her name with her second feature, 2010’s Winter’s Bone, which starred a then relatively unknown actress named Jennifer Lawrence. Lawrence was, of course, fantastic in it, but it is no exaggeration to say that the young lead actress Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie who appears in Leave No Trace is equally gifted.
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Hide AdThis is the story of 13-year-old Tom who lives with her father, Will, played by Ben Foster. Their life-style is totally unorthodox (we meet them when they are living in woodlands where the authorities clamp down on them). But where the story goes from there is better not disclosed since the background which is key to it is only revealed in the film little by little and one can only guess where the tale will lead. What can be said is that the colour photography is stunning and that a close father/daughter relationship has rarely been shown on screen with such depth and conviction. That we come to realise that the needs of Tom and Will, for both of whom we have come to care, are not the same makes the film’s climax enormously moving.
By Alex Buchan