Bait 2019 Movie Review

Bait review - hypnotic take on tourists ruining Cornwall
Mark Jenkin’s film about two fishermen coping with the influx of sightseers is intriguing for its distinct visual style

Cornish film-maker Mark Jenkin has contributed one of the most arrestingly strange movies in Berlin this year. It’s an adventure in zero-budget analogue cinema, a black-and-white film shot with a Bolex cine-camera on 16mm film, and developed in such a way as to create ghostly glitches and scratches on the print. Now, that’s a nostalgist affectation that is sometimes unconvincing: I’m often agnostic when Guy Maddin does it. But the primitivism of Jenkin’s film is the real thing - and hypnotically strange.

A drama on what might be the rather hackneyed theme of tourists ruining Cornwall becomes a bizarre expressionist melodrama. It has the huge closeups and crashingly emphatic narrative grammar of early cinema and, like home movies, it has non-diegetic sound, with dialogue overdubs and ambient noise which could well be taken from a sound effects LP. But it’s very effective, and the monochrome cinematography desentimentalises the Cornish landscape, turning it into an anti-picture postcard. The weirdness of Bait can’t be overestimated, like FW Murnau directing an episode of EastEnders.

Martin Ward (Edward Rowe) is a fisherman, a gloweringly aggressive man who resents the incomers who have taken over his village. Fishing is in decline. Where once this industry used bait to catch fish, now the whole community and the beautiful landscape are used as bait to catch tourists. Only it feels as if the tourists are the ones who have the locals in their net.

Martin and his brother Steven (Giles King) have been forced to sell their late father’s picturesque harbour-front cottage to Londoners who stay there in the summer and Airbnb the loft to other tourists. With colossal insensitivity, they have gutted the place and redecorated it in a twee “fisherfolk” style with nets and maritime memorabilia on the walls.
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As Martin growls to his brother: “Ropes and chains like a sex dungeon.” Steven now uses the family’s fishing boat to give tourists sightseeing trips, including crowds of idiotic blokes on stag weekends. Martin himself is saving up for a new boat, but insists on trying to be a fisherman without one, wading out into the surf with a net for sea bass, trying to catch lobster with a single pot, and selling the meagre catch to local pubs and cafes.

In his martyred way, he almost savours the humiliation of doing this, and nurses the resentment involved. His irritation with the Londoners explodes when his ramshackle van gets clamped by the security firm for parking in the now-reserved spaces outside his former family home and a hundred other little slights add to his simmering rage.

Meanwhile, Steven’s son is more interested in learning the ways of fishing than tourist-pleasing - but his sexual attraction to the young women that arrive with the holidaymakers creates a separate crosscurrent of tension.

Jenkin adds to the disorientation by introducing little premonition flashes of events still to come. A young local woman throws a white ball at the tourists’ cottage and, before the police show up, we see a glimpse of the handcuffs still to come. We also see this same white ball superimposed on the ghostly moon.

Without the roughness and even crudity of Jenkins’ homemade effects, this “montage” gesture would not have been plausible. But within the stylised visual language he’s using, it works very well.

There are other conspicuous juxtapositions: two different scenes will be interleaved, with different characters, in closeup, yelling at each other. What an intriguing and unexpectedly watchable film. Bait is an experiment - and a successful one.
Directed by Mark Jenkin
Writing Credits Mark Jenkin
Cast
Edward Rowe ... Martin Ward
Martin Ellis ... Billy Ward
Giles King ... Steven Ward
Isaac Woodvine ... Neil Ward
Mary Woodvine ... Sandra Leigh
Simon Shepherd ... Tim Leigh
Georgia Ellery ... Katie Leigh
Jowan Jacobs ... Hugo Leigh
Chloe Endean ... Wenna Kowalski
Stacey Guthrie ... Liz Stewart
Tristan Sturrock ... Brian Rikard
Morgan Val Baker ... Husband
Janet Thirlaway ... Mrs. Peters
BAFTA Awards 2020
Winner Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer
Mark Jenkin Linn Waite Kate Byers
Nominee Outstanding British Film of the Year
Mark Jenkin Linn Waite Kate Byers

BAIT (2009)

BAIT (director/writer: Mark Jenkin; cinematographer: Mark Jenkin; editor: Mark Jenkin; music: Mark Jenkin; cast: Morgan Val Baker (Husband), Georgia Ellery (Katie Leigh), Edward Rowe (Martin Ward), Giles King (Steven Ward), Mary Woodvine (Sandra Leigh), Simon Shepherd (Tim Leigh), Chloe Endean (Wenna Kowalski), Isaac Woodvine (Neil Ward); Runtime: 89; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Kate Byers, Linn Waite; Early Day Films; 2019-UK-black and white)
“It’s endearing as a strangely stylized artsy indie.”Reviewed by Dennis SchwartzShot on monochrome in B/W and on a hand-cranked 16mm Bolex. The directorial debut of British filmmaker and photographer Mark Jenkin is an auspicious one. It’s set in a picturesque Cornish fishing village invaded by tourists.The aggressive but taciturn Martin Ward (Edward Rowe, Cornish comedian) is a cove fisherman who is in a bitter dispute with his brother Steven (Giles King) over the bourgeois tourists overtaking his family’s traditional fishing village and taking away his livelihood. The siblings because of a decline in the fishing trade have been forced to sell their late father’s picturesque harbor-front cottage to wealthy Londoners Sandra and Tim (Mary Woodvine and Simon Shepherd) who stay there in the summer and use the loft to house tourists. Martin is pissed that the family boat is used by Steven as a sightseeing boat, leaving him without one, and that the newcomers have gutted the place and redecorated it with cheesy touristy fishing gear on the walls. He broods more when the newcomers are given his former parking spots and refuse to allow him parking. Martin hungers so much to be a fisherman, even without a boat, that he uses a net to catch sea bass on the surf, catches lobster with a single pot, and sells the small catch to local cafes. He aspires to one day buy a boat. Steven’s estranged nephew Neil (Isaac Woodvine) and the Leighs’ teenage daughter Katie (Georgia Ellery) hit it off romantically, so even if Neil, who would prefer to be a fisherman again, resists because he falls in with the London crowd. It’s endearing as a strangely stylized artsy indie that builds on social tensions to a violent conclusion. It’s based on the old themes of traditional life clashing with modern life. All the sympathies are on the sides of those trying to protect their old way of life. The faults lie in how stiffly most of the characters get portrayed.