Mari

Expanding her 2016 short, Abandon, writer/director Georgia Parris makes an assured feature bow with this meticulously staged chamber piece. Making bold use of modern dance, she explores the emotions churning inside Bobbi Jene Smith's choreographer Charlotte when she's summoned from London by her mother (Phoebe Nicholls) to her dying grandmother's Dorset bedside during preparations for a career-making show. Having been raised in New York by her father, Charlotte has never felt particularly close to older sister Lauren (Madeleine Worrall) and the realisation that she's pregnant, just as her sibling is struggling to recover from a miscarriage, exacerbates an already tense situation. In only her second acting role, dancer Smith makes a solid impression alongside Worrall and Nicholls. But she's at her most expressive enacting Maxine Doyle's choreography in the Peter Gregson-scored rehearsal and reverie sequences, which feel as indebted to the work of German dancer Pina Bausch, as the dramatic elements echo the films of Ingmar Bergman and Joanna Hogg.