Jellyfish **** (2018, Liv Hill, Sinead Matthews, Cyril Nri) – Movie Review

I really appreciated Jellyfish. It is first class. Newcomer Liv Hill is just great as 15-year-old schoolgirl Sarah Taylor, the sole carer of her family, including precocious young twin siblings and an unfunctioning manic-depressive mother (Sinead Matthews).

A Margate-set British kitchen sink art movie, Jellyfish looks and sounds incredibly striking as co-written and directed by the talented first-time feature film director James Gardner, who has an eye for a good shot and an ear for a sharp line of dialogue. It is desperately stark and bleak, but it feels alive, real and truthful. It has spark and breath, anger, hurt and rage, as well as wit and wisdom too.

To make ends meet, Sarah has a part-time job in the drab and depressing town’s seaside arcade, working for an abusive boss, Vince (Angus Barnett), while making extra money on the side with the customers. At school, the other pupils are abusive to Sarah too.

They get a little money and blow some of it at Dreamland, the amusement park that Lindsay Anderson immortalised in his 1953 film short O Dreamland. They have refurbished and reopened it apparently, but it still looks bleak, and is still a symbol for fake hope.

Things get worse and worse, but, in the school drama class, Sarah discovers an unexpected outlet for her frustration and quick-tempered wit: stand-up comedy in a showcase performance at the local theatre. Hope is offered, just maybe, but not much. Sarah’s stand-up is challenging truthful, and none too funny. There are no easy solutions, there is no fake feel-good uplift. Gardner is keeping it real.

Liv Hill is nominated as Young British/Irish Performer of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards 2019.

Liv Hill and Sinead Matthews jointly won the award for Best Performance in a British Feature Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2018.

It won four awards at the Dinard British Film Festival 2018.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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