Review: Electricity
"An electric storm starts in my skull and my brain takes a detour," Lily (Agyness Deyn) confides, describing the onset of an epileptic seizure. Bryn Higgins' sophomore film Electricity immerses viewers in her condition, likening her experience to Alice falling down the rabbit hole.
The story is slight, though films have been built on less. Lily lives in the seaside town of Saltburn by the Sea, where she works at the change counter of an amusement arcade. The resulting inheritance from her neglectful mother's death brings older brother Barry (Paul Anderson) back into her life. He wants to divide the money between the two of them, but Lily is intent on tracking down their long-lost younger brother Mikey (Christian Cooke) so he can have his rightful share. Lily travels to London where, in the midst of her quest to find Mikey, she encounters a variety of strangers, some helpful (Lenora Crichtlow's Mel) and others with disguised intentions.
Higgins shores up the patchy narrative with visual flourishes that depict Lily's condition from her point of view: images blurring at the sides, tendrils of electrical currents crackling into view, a sort of kaleidoscoping of consciousness that both frightens and fascinates. More explicit dreamlike imagery include ceilings morphing into oceans and a bird making its way out of Lily's mouth. Higgins and cinematographer Si Bell impressively swamp the senses, taking obvious inspiration from Stan Brakhage, Henri-Georges Clouzet (specifically, his unfinished psychological drama L'Enfer), and Julian Schnabel, who also deployed creative in-camera effects for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
The production team take care great defining Lily's everyday surroundings - her flat is an impressionistic collage of drawings and knickknacks. Her colourful outfits, a hodgepodge of patterns and textures, hint at an unpredictability and uncontrollability.
Electricity's main weakness is its underdeveloped supporting characters, though the actors go a long way in paving the potholes. Crichtlow, as Lily's Good Samaritan, is sympathetic whilst Anderson gives himself over to the loucheness of card shark Barry. Cooke gets a terrific scene late in the film, which sees Mikey's simmering agitation boil over into violent rage.
Deyn, who blazed onto the fashion scene in the mid-Aughts, offers up a performance that will surely be called revelatory. Guarded but vulnerable, determined but fragile, sexy but insecure, her Lily refuses to be defined by her condition and often dismisses the kindness of strangers. Deyn has many an affecting moment, perhaps none more poignant than when Lily suffers a seizure after having sex. As the fog overtakes her, she pleads with herself, "Let me stay normal here at least." Moments later, she's being carried out of the ambulance and seeing the man, who had been so attracted to her only minutes before, disappear from view. "Bye," she whispers, another chance at a normal life lost in the haze.
Electricity
Directed by: Bryn Higgins
Written by: Joe Fisher; based on Ray Robinson's novel
Starring: Agyness Deyn, Paul Anderson, Christian Cooke, Lenora Crichtlow, Tom Georgeson, Ben Batt
