‘The End We Start From’ Review: Mahalia Belo’s Eco-Disaster Movie Is A Compelling Meditation On Parenthood – Toronto Film Festival
15.09.2023 - 04:43
/ deadline.com
There’s a misconception that the British are a stoic people who just might get quite cross in the event of a zombie apocalypse. But the truth is rather different, as was shown in 2005, when six people were hospitalized and a man stabbed when an Ikea store in North London put 500 leather sofas on sale for less than 60 bucks each and a riot ensued.
In that sense, Mahalia Belo’s intriguing debut The End We Start From is very much a British disaster movie, speculating just how quickly the country’s perceived veneer of respectability would evaporate in a crisis. But, more than that, it’s a dreamlike study of what it means to give birth, how life-changing the experience is and the strain it puts on relationships. It would make a great double bill with Children of Men.
When we first meet the Woman (Jodie Comer), she is heavily pregnant and running a bath. The sound of that running water merges with the torrential rain outside, a pitiless deluge that appears to have been falling for days, if not weeks. Her partner R (Joel Fry) checks in by phone, but she is very much alone, desperately mopping up the puddles that are coming in through the cracks in the door. When her water breaks, the Thames bursts its banks too, and the Woman wakes up in hospital, where she has given birth. They call the baby Zeb, and, since London is drowning and they live by the river, they brave the gridlock and drive up north.
This journey, like everything else, is covered with clarity and elliptical brevity; an argument with a policeman at a road closure is a microcosm of what’s happening all over the country as local communities are closing ranks. Nevertheless, because of the baby, they make it through to the secluded, rural home of R’s father and