Film about troubled family has problems of its own, writes Christine Powley.
Director: Rufus Norris
Cast: Eloise Laurence, Tim Roth, Rory Kinnear, Robert Emms, Cillian Murphy, Denis Lawson, Clare Burt, Zana Marjanovic, Faye Daveney, Rosie Kosky, George Sargeant
Rating: (R16)
Two stars out of five
Broken (Rialto) tells the story of three families in a cul-de-sac, locked in by Britain's house deflation. Each family has problems.
Older couple the Buckley's are tied to their developmentally challenged son Rick. The Oswald's are missing a mother, and dad Bob (Rory Kinnear) reacts with over-protective anger to his running-wild daughters and anyone he feels has wronged them.
The final family has also lost a mother but dad Archie (Tim Roth) can afford live-in help and his household is on a more even keel. We see things from the viewpoint of 12-year-old Skunk (Eloise Laurence). She was a premature baby, has type 1 diabetes and has been lovingly nurtured under the caring eye of Archie.
Things are changing in her world as she is about to move to the less-caring environment of high school. That is natural change.
Less predictably, one day she witnesses her cul-de-sac explode into mutual loathing when Bob Oswald attacks Rick Buckley because his daughter Saskia (Faye Daveney) has lied that she is having sex with Rick. Archie is a lawyer and he tries to mediate but the time for soothing words is past.
Best thing: The acting is so fine that the melodrama of the plot is almost papered over.
Worst thing: The audience is kept in constant suspense waiting for the next crisis to spiral out of control and by the time of the garish climax we have stopped believing in the sequence of events.
See it with: British immigrants wavering about why they left Old Blighty.
