Eavesdropping At The Movies

Shot in black and white on a clockwork camera from the 1970s, the hand-development of its 16mm film resulting in scratches and unpredictable changes in exposure, and its soundtrack entirely post-synchronised, Mark Jenkin's Bait is audiovisually suffused with atmosphere and texture, and not a little dreamlike and weird to boot. It tells the story of Martin, a Cornish fisherman struggling to cope with the upheaval of both his region and his life specifically that results from an influx of middle-class settlers. He's sold his family's cottage to a family of outsiders, his brother now uses his fishing boat to take tourists on drunken stag parties, and Martin snarls and growls his way through dealing with these changes. It's clear that we're meant to see Martin as a hero, but he's tilting at windmills - though perhaps that's WHY he's a hero - and José argues that the film is deeply conservative, asking, for instance, why it's so bad that Martin's brother adapts to his changing environment by taking tourists on tr