Anyone coming to this extraordinary film unfamiliar with the work of Mark Jenkin, a Cornish original, would surely be surprised to hear that this might be his most orthodox feature yet.
Rose of Nevada is certainly weird. It concerns two fishermen who travel backwards in time while aboard a vessel that seemed to have vanished decades earlier. One ends up in a relationship with the mother (now young again) of a girl he earlier (or later?) flirted with in what counts as the present. The other is sent into spirals of gloom by the impossible transportation.
So it’s not exactly an everyday tale. But that could be the makings of a creaky old BBC Ghost Story for Christmas. What first sets it apart is the singular nature of Jenkin’s film-making. Shooting 16mm film on clanky wind-up cameras, the director delivers images blotched and scratched as if dragged up from forgotten archives. As in Bait and Enys Men, his breakthrough features, he reminds us that a film is, as well as the images we see on screen, a physical object with weight and imperfection.
Jenkin is also notable for connecting with the earthy, briny soul of Cornwall. George MacKay and Callum Turner play Nick and Liam, two seamen knocked back when the titular fishing boat reappears without its long-mourned crew. They somewhat rashly embark on a trawl and, returning “home”, find themselves in a busier village where smoking is allowed in the pub and where the local post office, a food bank in 2025, still sells stamps.
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Jenkin is making a gentle point about the emollient changes that, over the past few decades, dulled down certain parts of his home county. The argument is expressed so gently that you could easily miss it. The village of 30 years previously is not an easy place in which to live. Fishing was always a tough business. The men on the boats carry a heavy responsibility. But Liam, at least, finds comfort in the society that existed just before he was born.
[ Mark Jenkin on Rose of Nevada: ‘You don’t want to be luxuriating too much’Opens in new window ]
Whereas Enys Men, though brilliant in its weirdness, distanced itself from its characters, the new picture is sticky and sweaty with rough humanity. For all the eccentricity of its premise, Rose of Nevada has things to say about how easily we can become disconnected from the relatively recent past.
In cinemas from Friday, April 24th
