“Little bit of a toughie, this one,” are the prophetic first phrases of this gritty city thriller by East London-born director Gerard Johnson. Odyssey’s protagonist, Natasha Flynn (Polly Maberly), is having a knowledge tooth taken out, and we see its elimination in close-up. Thank heavens for small mercies, nevertheless; although it presages some excessive violence within the movie’s last stretch, that is nothing in comparison with the extremities of the director’s earlier work: contemplate the unsimulated swingers’ intercourse get together in his final film Muscle (2019), or the harrowing scenes of intercourse trafficking within the one which preceded it, Hyena (2014).
Johnson’s forte is the Manichean gangster film, in that every one his movies interrogate the connection between good and evil. His debut, Tony (2009), was an empathetic research of a down-at-heel London serial killer, whereas Hyena was a lot on the nostril, being the Unhealthy Lieutenant-style story of a corrupt cop working within the capital’s drug squad. And for the Newcastle-set gym-buddy drama Muscle — a uncommon change of surroundings for the director — Johnson ready two variations, the Angel Minimize and the Satan Minimize, the latter that includes bonus express content material from the aforementioned intercourse get together.
It takes some time to see the place Odyssey suits into Johnson’s filmography, since, for starters, it’s his first feminine character research. Natasha Flynn is a letting agent, the proprietor of an organization known as Flynn’s (motto: “Reside and let stay”) and boss to a employees of two. We meet her on a Monday, the identical day that trainee Dylan (Jasmine Blackborow) joins the corporate on a mentorship scheme. Natasha has loads of knowledge to share, letting Dylan in on the secrets and techniques of the commerce (a property is “by no means small however compact”) and bringing her alongside to cope with two units of shoppers, a naïve younger straight couple after which — rather more of a problem — a pair of finicky homosexual males. Each fall for her easy gross sales patter, as anybody would.
Natasha is a grasp of her universe, and is within the technique of negotiating a merger that may see her firm develop into a brand new, a lot greater workplace house. However as we already know, there are cracks showing in her designer way of life. First her bank card is declined on the dentist’s, then a sequence of telephone calls are available in: ten messages from her pal Sophie and several other from the financial institution. Sophie desires her a refund, the financial institution supervisor desires to debate her cost plans for a enterprise mortgage, and through a late evening in a flashy membership we be taught that she has additionally been borrowing from its very shady supervisor (“The financial institution of Dan,” he calls it).
In the meantime, one thing effervescent away within the background is the information that one other property agent, Douglas Kelly, has mysteriously disappeared. Self-absorbed as she is, Natasha is aware of full effectively and couldn’t care much less (in any case, that is somebody to says, on the telephone, “When are you going to do one thing for me, Mum?”). However when it begins to seem like the merger is headed south, Natasha is compelled right into a troublesome scenario — one which includes the lacking man and a proposal she will’t refuse.
If the altering face of London was backdrop to Tony, it’s entrance and middle in Odyssey, which, at its coronary heart, is a dispatch from occupied territory. Outdated London has gone, changed by wine bars, artisanal bakeries and, effectively, a lot of property brokers (in a single scene, Natasha hunts for the one man who may also help her — “The Viking” — by way of a succession of the few old-school boozers left in Camden City). Gentrification is a performed deal, and Natasha is, arguably, simply satisfying demand.
The principal participant in all this motion, nevertheless, is cash, which is the place the idea of fine and evil comes into play, pitting Natasha’s “respectable” earnings streams in opposition to the “soiled” cash that guarantees to bail her out. However why is Dan’s mortgage any sleazier than Sophie’s, because the solely cause she’s asking for it again is that “we want that cash for the horses”? As above, so under. However extra subversive is the way in which Johnson has us root for the morally doubtful Natasha, who leaves her collectors twisting within the wind — very like her tenants, who come to grasp the true of which means of purchaser’s regret — and but in some way finds the cash to fund a cocaine behavior.
Key to the movie’s success is main girl Maberly, an awesome British actress who appears to be have been hiding in plain sight thus far. Maberly is the glue that binds collectively what may so simply have regarded like two very completely different scripts minimize in half and jammed collectively; consequently, the movie actually works to earn the dramatic tonal shift that builds to a climax involving a abandoned farmhouse, huge armory of weapons and a glowing pentagram carved into the floorboards.
Particular point out additionally to the digital rating by Johnson’s common composer — his brother Matt, A.Okay.A. The The — whose digital rating units the temper. Of explicit word is a superb new track, “I Want It”, a duet that lists a sequence of contradictions (“I need it / I don’t need it / I would like it / I don’t want it”) in a capitalist critique that makes the proper anthem for this new breed of antihero.
Title: Odyssey
Pageant: SXSW (Visions)
Director: Gerard Johnson
Screenwriter: Gerard Johnson, Austin Collings.
Forged: Polly Maberly, Mikael Persbrandt, Jasmine Blackborow, Man Burnet, Ryan Hayes, Charley Palmer Rothwell, Kellie Shirley
Operating time: 1 hr 50 minutes
