Ariztical Entertainment
announced this past week that British filmmaker Kate Lane’s feature-length directorial
debut, Fear of Water, will be making its way to the domestic home
entertainment marketplace on Sept. 12.
In the late 1950s and
early 1960s Fear of Water would be right at home with the Kitchen Sink realism
of that period — akin to A Taste of Honey, The L-Shaped Room, A Kind
of Loving, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, etc. Based on actual experiences in Lane’s own
life (script is by Edward Davenport), we meet Alexia (Lily Loveless — perhaps
best known as Naomi in the television series Skins), who is welfare-class
poor and hustles drugs and other odd jobs to put food on the table.
Her father
is disabled, her mother is a drunk … these living conditions, and the
environment that goes with it, have made her tough beyond her young years … she
wants something better, but lacks a clear path out of her loneliness; her despair.
Eleanor (Chloe Partridge
— The
Crypt, Blood Lust), on the other hand, is from wealth and
privilege. Her father is a barrister (a
fancy word for lawyer), who is almost hostile in having his teenage daughter
home from boarding school … she’s an inconvenience. To complicate things further, her
grandmother dies on the day she returns home from school and her mother has
long since abandoned the family.
Educated and free from financial worries, she too is nevertheless alone;
she is adrift.
By happenstance the two
meet, form a bond of friendship and find solace in meeting at a quiet lake area
(although Eleanor is afraid of the water).
Their friendship blossoms into a genuine affection as they discover —
although from different sides of the proverbial “tracks” — that they have much
in common.
This friendship will be
tested as their respective “environments” have a nasty way of reaching out and
saying “no, no, no.”
Fear of Water is a lovely coming of age film that tests the
status quo (rebellious daughter; a young woman not knowing her place) and is
blessed with gorgeous cinematography (Nick Lowen in his first feature-length
film … although a “camera operator” on such Brit series as Midsomer Murders and William
and Mary). Be sure to mark Sept.
12 on your viewing calendar for this late-summer respite.
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