A mental health nurse struggling to come to terms with traumatic events from her past falls in love with one of her patients in Sacha Polak's tough but honest drama.
Two minutes into Dutch filmmaker Sacha Polak’s fourth feature, Silver Haze, and the film that instantly springs to mind is Gary Oldman’s Nil By Mouth: the fondly recreated working-class milieu of a Dagenham housing estate; the overlapping dialogue from a multi-directional front-room confab; the sudden bursts of violent invective and the sense that the familial harmony we’re witnessing in this moment will be short-lived.
The film stars Vicky Knight, extraordinary as the brooding, disconsolate day nurse, caring for her mentally ill mother and on a mission to track down her estranged father in order to discover why, as a child, she was left in a burning pub and now bares the scars of that fateful night. A spark is formed with flighty out-patient Florence (Esme Creed-Miles) who lives in a commune in Southend with a malformed family of lost souls, and Vicky is invited over to tend to her wounds.
Yet this is no simple tale of love’s constellations offering a shroud for all the darkness and depression, more an expression of how this budding relationship brings with it a whole raft of additional trials and traumas. Silver Haze is a hacked-away crosscut of life on the social fringes, a Molotov soap opera powered by committed performances and containing characters who are, to a man, sculpted with genuine depth and humanity.
Little White Lies is committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them.
Published 27 Mar 2024
We were big fans of Polak’s previous feature, Dirty God.
It deals with tough questions and tough situations, but the quality is undeniable.
A messy film, but in a very lifelike and truthful way. Knight and Creed-Miles are amazing.
By Elena Lazic
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Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
