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Film pearl "Bait" about gentrification: Getting along with the new

2019-10-25T16:31:47.533Z


Art comes from bait: Marked by pointed formalism, Mark Jenkin finds in "Bait" an exciting new way to tell about gentrification. Even humor is not too short.



Suspiciously, Martin (Edward Rowe) surveys the small buoys that hang as decoration in his former home. "Damn look like my own." "No," replies the new owner Sandra (Mary Woodvine), who has just traveled with her family for a few days holiday from London to the coast of Cornwall. "I have them from the internet."

In more detail, the dialogues in Mark Jenkins "Bait" (English for: bait) not. But why should they? The conflict that the film tells about is finally known. Wealthy city dwellers discover the primitive in the countryside and use their money to do as much good as they can bad, preserve one thing and oust the other.

And sometimes it all happens at the same time. For example, when Martin's brother Steven (Giles War) can hold his father's fishing boat because of the new influxes of tourists, but bawling bachelor parties with men in penis costumes must fidget around.

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3 pictures

"Bait": A problem seabear goes around

Jenkin has already made a number of short films on how repression works in his native Cornwall. "Bait" is his first feature film. With him, he first caused a stir at this year's Berlinale, in the meantime he has brought in eulogies: "one of the authoritative British films of the decade" called him about the "Guardian". What Jenkin is talking about may not be new, as he says, but it does not.

With a Bolex camera in 16 millimeters on black and white, Jenkin shot and then developed the material himself. This gives the images of "Bait" a coarseness that makes seeing significantly more relaxed - a greater contrast to the flood of images from HFR and 3D films like "Gemini Man" could not be imagined. At the same time, this also focuses on seeing - on the emotional components of the images, the anger and the lack of understanding that build up so quickly in the encounters between villagers and visitors.

Similarly, Jenkin acts on the soundtrack, which he had to add later, since the Bolex picks up no sound. Here, too, he concentrates maximally and has only re-toned sounds and conversations that are relevant to the story. The result: an intensity of images and sounds that border on sensual overpowering.

"Bait"
UK 2019
Book, Director, Camera and Music: Mark Jenkin
Performers: Edward Rowe, Giles King, Mary Woodvine, Simon Shepherd, Georgie Ellery, Jowan Jacobs, Isaac Woodvine
Production: Early Day Films
Rental: Arsenal
Length: 88 minutes
Start: 24th October 2019

With this escalated artificiality, Jenkin bypasses the risk of romanticizing the authentic and traditional and thereby hardening the fronts. As archaic as the fundamental conflict in "Bait" is, that is how differentiated its actors are.

Some villagers, such as Martin's brother, arrange themselves quickly with the new, some throwing them with billiard balls after them. Many a handyman puts the locals with parking claws, many others lie down to bed with them. A bit of soap and a mischievous kitchen sink drama is what "Bait" is. And if the local comedian Edward Rowe as Martin pushes his bearded chin and his grim look so exaggeratedly nubby in the picture, then humor also comes into play.

If you want to find something hopeful in a story of repression, then that's probably what it is: At least in the cinematic setting that "Bait" sets, the side-by-side and the confusion of old and new is a tremendous joy.

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2019-10-25

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