"...lingering eeriness" writes LifestyleMK's Tremayne Miller of "Norfolk" directed by BAFTA nominated Martin Radich

CREATIVE ENGLAND, BBC FILMS & BFI PRESENT

AN SDI PRODUCTIONS, CRYBABY FILMS & IFEATURES PRODUCTION

NORFOLK

STARRING DENIS MÉNOCHET AND BARRY KEOGHAN

Running Time:  90 mins.

The UK release of NORFOLK premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and in the UK at The Edinburgh International Film Festival. 

With an exciting European cast made up of Denis Ménochet (Assassin’s Creed, Inglourious Basterds, Robin Hood), Barry Keoghan (Dunkirk, Trespass Against Us, ’71), Eileen Davies (High-Rise, Sightseers, Another Year), Sean Buckley (The Fifth Element, Les Misérables) and newcomer Goda Letkauskaite. 

“dreamlike”

Screen International

NORFOLK, the second feature from BAFTA-nominated writer/director Martin Radich is a disturbing thriller about a father and son who live away from society but the strong connection they hold is placed in jeopardy when the father’s past creeps up behind them.

Set amidst the idyllic backdrop of Norfolk, with its brooding landscape, where people spend their days hunting, fishing and daydreaming.

Then, quite out of the blue, the father, who is a mercenary, is handed a final mission, which threatens not only to obliterate the target but also the love between the father and son. 

Denis Ménochet (40) in the film, Norfolk, is perhaps best known for his role playing Perrier LaPadite, a French dairy farmer, interrogated by the Nazis after harboring Jews, in 2009 Quentin Tarantino film, Inglourious Basterds.

Elizabeth Weitzman, film critic for the New York Daily News praised Ménochet for his work alongside Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained, 2012) in the opening scene.

Weitzman writes "The terrific opening .. feature(s) a hailstorm of bullets. What you'll remember best, though, is the haunted silence of actor Denis Ménochet, playing a French farmer accused of harboring Jews.”

Rising talent, Barry Keoghan, whose film credits include’71 and Standby with Brian Gleeson, recently completed the filming of Trespass Against Us with Michael Fassbender, Brendan Gleeson and Rory Kinnear. He will also appear in much spoken about epic Dunkirk alongside an all-star cast including: Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Kenneth Branagh, and Mark Rylance.

Martin Radich’s pastoral tragedy follows the fallout of vindictive mercenary and his idealistic son.

In Denis Menochet we find a stone cold human being, against a backdrop of violent, yet stylized images, even if these on occasion do appear to conflict with the narrative. 

The film is likely to be better received by festival

goers, as opposed to international distributors.

A comparable but slightly more accessible film, also set amidst the flatlands of Norfolk is Guy Myhill’s “The Goob,” which featured at The Venice Film Festival in 2014.

 “Norfolk” is different from The Goob, in that it wastes no time in establishing a distinct style, where characters wave around shotguns and stare expressionless at a series of television sets. Director of Photography, Tim Sidell’s heavily processed lensing fused together with J.G. Thirlwell’s atonal score bring an element of surrealism to this ‘end-of-days’ style film.

Names bare no importance in the story, and Menochet, a mercenary lives contentedly off the land.

There is no evidence of a mother, apart from a tattooed band on the father’s ring finger. 

However, the nervous father and son pairing is brought to an abrupt end, when the man is given one final bloody mission to carry out.

But as the details emerge of the assignment it does not appear as professional as it did from the outset.

The son, in the meantime, is torn, caught in the middle, having fallen for a young Lithuanian girl, who’s under the care of “the revolutionaries,” the people the man has been asked to dispose of.

The saga, not complexed can be hard to pick up on sometimes, as the visual formats shift, and the symbolism can go from being a kind of dystopian sci-fi to a Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Whilst this form of storytelling may have an impact on our over all understanding of the film, the mere edginess of Menochet makes up for it, whether he’s delivering hardened monologues, such as “Some say it’s God who makes the decisions, some say it’s the Devil… neither gives a s***,” or peeling a hard-boiled egg in absolute silence.

Tremayne Miller

Menochet’s lingering eeriness make him the unconventional leading man that he is.

For further information on the film please visit: www.norfolkthefilm.com /twitter: @NorfolkFilm

Writer: c. Tremayne Miller