Look, I know we here at No But Listen might spend a bit more time in genre fiction than in the classic straightforward human story. But, once in a while, a good drama comes along that gives us no choice but to step out of the world of horror and into the real one – and that movie, this time around, is Effi o Blaenau.
Effi o Blaenau follows the titular Effi (Leisa Gwenllian) after a sexual encounter with a near-stranger leaves her pregnant and forces her to re-evaluate her life choices before a tragedy leaves her facing several impossible desicions. Adapted from the 2015 play by Gary Owen, Iphigenea in Splott, it re-imagines the myth of Iphigenea against a modern Welsh working class backdrop, spanning social and personal issues alike, with legendary Welsh director Marc Evans (Resurrection Men, House of America) behind the camera.
Evans, with nearly thirty years’ experience behind the camera, steers the film with the utmost confidence – while Effi o Blaenau is, on paper, a drama, his genre-spanning skills are on full display here. The second act sequence where the suffers a traumatic birth and the loss of her premature baby is shot like a horror film, sickening and nerve-rattling and dreadful in the most literal sense of the word, while the flirtation and romance between Effi and Lee oozes with a fluttery, dreamlike sweetness.
The social commentary that underpins the film, particularly the matter of the UK healthcare system, never lands on the preachy side, carefully-drawn and obviously interwoven with genuine passion for the matter at hand, and the visual balance between the fading industrial town and the wild Welsh countryside clashes past, present, and future together in almost every big frame. Even where the film betrays its theatrical origins, with a couple of monologues that feel a little too distinctly like they were lifted straight from Owen’s original play, Evans handles the material with a deftness and care that swells this small-scale story up to fill a feature-length runtime with ease.
Really, though, I think the selling point for this movie are the performances, particularly Leisa Gwenllian as Effi herself. Gwenllian has a clear passion for the source material – a monologue from the original play was her audition for drama school – and the depth she imbues this character with will be, in a just world, a star-making turn for her. When the movie opens, it feels like we already have this idea of who Effi is – a user, selfish, listless – and Gwenllian expertly unpicks that over the course of the movie, plumbing the depths of grief as much as the nervous connections, both new and old, that she makes in the face of the tragedy that befalls her. Tom Rhys Harries (side note – crazy to think, while watching this, that he’s going to be bringing one of Batman’s most iconic villains, Clayface, to the screen in just a few months) and Owen Alun as Lee and Kev, her romantic and sexual entanglements, play perfect parallels to each other, each naïve to the ways they both help and hurt her. Carys Gwilym as her grandmother hits home some of the movie’s most emotionally-dense moments, underplaying them without losing their bite
The story and setting are interesting enough in their own right, and Evans’ genre-bending direction is worth the price of entry alone – but it’s really these characters and the performances that bring them to life that elevate Effi o Blaneau to excellence.
If you enjoyed this article and want to see more stuff like it, please consider supporting us on Ko-Fi. You can check out more of my work on my personal blog, The Cutprice Guignol!
By Lou MacGregor
(header image via Bouquets & Brickbats)
No But Listen 