Verity's Summer

With his feature film debut, writer/director Ben Crowe shows great ambition, but his reach exceeds his grasp in trying to examine a wide range of social issues through the eyes of sulkily precocious teenager Verity (Indea Barbe-Willson). She falls for a Polish cabby (Cristi Hogas) while her academic mother (Nicola Wright) and policeman father (James Doherty) bicker about his involvement with a homeless war veteran (Martin McGlade). The bigger problems under scrutiny range from war crimes and post-combat trauma to the mistreatment of immigrants and domestic dysfunction. It's all set in a middle-class milieu, which is depicted in a measured, mannered style reminiscent of Joanna Hogg (Archipelago). This is a problematic approach, as each incident is enacted with an earnest deliberation intrusively underlined by Alexandros Miaris's score. But Crowe still fails to generate much dramatic momentum. Views of the Northumberland coast are sublime but, for all its sincerity, this is self-consciously arty and a little stultifying.