Mark Jenkin's new film Rose of Nevada is a haunting and atmospheric time-loop drama set in a struggling Cornish fishing village. The narrative centres on the eponymous boat, lost with all hands 30 years prior, which mysteriously reappears, offering two young unemployed men—rootless drifter Liam (Callum Turner) and family man Nick (George MacKay)—the opportunity to crew the vessel. Following their first fishing expedition, they return to shore only to discover that they have been transported back in time to 1993, when the seaside town was still thriving, and the pair are mistaken for the boat’s original crew.
This time-shift brings about a reversal of fortunes for the two men, at least during the periods when they are on dry land (though, in truth, there is little dry land in this rain-lashed coastal village). In effect, Nick has lost his family, while Liam has suddenly acquired one. This dynamic becomes a source of mounting tension between the pair, each of whom has a very different approach to the situation: as the brooding Nick squats in the empty house he will one day own, the blithely opportunistic Liam assumes the identity of one of the drowned fishermen and settles into his new domestic role alongside the dead man’s partner and child.
But their days at sea prove to be a great leveller, and the two men—freed from the complications of life in the village—form a capable team as they labour in perilous conditions to bring in the daily catch, urged on by a ghostly captain (Francis Magee) who reminds them how much those at home depend on their success. Liam and Nick have been given real purpose, yet they cannot escape the awareness that a watery grave awaits them if events unfold as they did for the ship’s original crew. The time-slip conceit recalls that of Jenkin’s excellent previous film, Enys Men, which similarly nagged and needled the viewer.
Rose of Nevada is certainly starrier than Enys Men, with MacKay and Turner both fully committed to this very singular vision, and it feels curiously enmeshed with its predecessor (the eerie mayday call heard in Enys Men hints at a link to the ghost ship at the heart of Jenkin's latest feature). Set in a Cornwall where cream teas and second homes have been supplanted by food banks and leaking roofs, Rose of Nevada offers a commentary on the present from which its two protagonists are ripped—but it is at its most powerful when it unfolds as a Resnaisian meditation in which memory and the past are the prime movers.
Darren Arnold
Images: BFI
