Parky At the Pictures (14/8/2026)

(Reviews of Songs of Forgotten Trees; Lady; Momo and the Time Thieves; and Mermaid Beach)

SONGS OF FORGOTTEN TREES.

In September 2025, Anuparna Roy became the first Indian to win the Best Director prize in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival. Now, her debut feature, Songs of Forgotten Trees, reaches UK cinemas. Running just 77 minutes, it still manages to offer potent insights into such issues as urban alienation, male entitlement, past associations, the shaping of destiny, and the performative nature of modern life.

When she arrives at her new lodgings in a large Mumbai residential block, Shweta (Sumi Baghel) sees her new roommate, Thooya (Naaz Shaikh), arguing with a young man about funds for her father's funeral. Settling into her room, Shweta plugs a headset into a computer and starts taking customer service calls. Thooya has hopes of becoming an actress, but she does sex work when not learning lines, with one of her clients being her landlord, Nitin (Bushan Shimpi). He is happy with her sub-letting the second bedroom, but insists on sleeping with her after ensuring she feels suitably grateful to him.

Thooya has online sessions with a female therapist, who asks her to describe her father leaving the family when she was a young girl. She also mentions a client who liked her long hair, but never sought sex, as well as her long-lost school friend, Jhuma, whom she still misses. Although they share the kitchen, Thooya and Shweta rarely talk while cooking and eat separately in their rooms, as they seem to have little in common and the latter is slightly embarrassed by the former's line of work. Nevertheless, she makes her a cup of tea when she gets in from acting class because she wants to borrow her red sari for a date.

During the meeting, Shweta's date makes it clear that he doesn't really want to get married and she agrees she is in no hurry. But she knows her best way out of telephony and bedsits is to find a husband who makes few demands. Thooya goes to an aquarium and stares into the tanks while calling her brother. She had wanted one as a child. but her father had refused. When she asks about Jhunma, she learns that no one has seen her since her road had flooded a year ago and her brother surmises that she must have moved to another village. He is more concerned with his sister sending cash to repair the roof than wondering whether Jhuma got married and had a daughter.

Thooya cooks for them both and they chat sitting on the floor, eating with their fingers. Shweta explains that she has been living in Delhi and wants to see the sea, even though Thooya claims it's salty and far from beautiful. Back in her room, she sings a song about someone knowing how to build a house, but not having the sense to use an umbrella in the rain.

A montage shows Thooya with some of her clients, with Shweta sometimes sitting in the courtyard while she's busy. She helps her record an audition tape and runs lines with her and the pair often sit at the window, framed in the light and detached from their neighbours and the rest of the hubbubing city. While Shweta is working the next day, however, a man comes to see Thooya because there have been complaints about men visiting her room at all hours. But she takes no nonsense and threatens to report them to Nitin if they try to bully her again.

While cooking, Shweta asks Thooya how she started acting and she reveals that she took a role in a school play because Jhuma was sick. They became firm friends, but her father felt she was a bad influence and Thooya regrets obeying his order to stop speaking to her, as they lost touch. Speaking through the toilet wall, she confides that she thinks her friend is somewhere in Mumbai, although when

Shewta emerges to wash her hands, Thooya admits that she has no idea whether her closest friend is even alive.

While Thooya is doing Shweta's make-up before she has another date, their eyes meet fleetingly. But they are interrupted by a client calling for Thooya, who listens patiently as he describes the pressure he is under to get his wife pregnant. On returning, Shweta complains that her date drove her around the outskirts on his motorbike, but Thooya spots a love bite on her neck and they laugh, as she sweeps back her long hair to examine the skin.

One night, Thooya brings some fish and they cook together, with Shweta even joining in with the umbrella song. As it's so repetititve, they get the giggles and we see a shot of them lying together with Shweta's head on Thooya's shoulder to reinforce how close they have become. Shweta buys cosmetics for them to try and she's disappointed to see coloured lights streaming under Thooya's door, as she's enteraining Nitin. Stroking her face with a rose, he calls her his mynah bird and asks why she doesn't get excited when they have sex and she insists she doesn't do that sort of thing. When he tries to cajole her into giving him a blow job, she says she doesn't like it and grumbles when he refuses to pleasure her.

Singing while working in adjoining rooms, Thooya teases Shweta about her voice. She jokes that she feels like she's from her village and wonders what it would have been like if they had met at school. Shweta asks if Thooya would have shown her the hollong trees, but she says she would not because they make people forget their true love. Coaxing her into admitting that Jhuma was her true love, Shweta stops scrubbing the bathroom floor and pretends to call Thooya, who sets down the garment she's washing in the kitchen. Claiming to be Jhuma, Shweta reveals that her husband refuses to let her call, although she admits to having been hurt when Thooya ghosted her at school.

She guesses that Thooya never married and asks if she has a boyfriend. When she conceded to having many, Shweta tells her that she would not allow her to follow her line of work, as she would be possessive and would want to take care of her. This makes Thooya go quiet and Shweta comes in to kneel beside her and hold her tight, in order to ease the distress of losing Jhuma and the pain of being alone for so long. Clinging to her friend, Thooya buries her head and sobs.

Video calling her therapist, Thooya tells her that she bumped into Jhuma on a bus. She struggled to remember her and she could see her husband with their infant daughter, while the other stayed close to her mother. She says she feels relieved to know she's okay, but the therapist senses she's sad and urges her to quit sex work, as she's forever risking her health. But Thooya insists she's okay and feeling positive.

The friends walk in the woods and Shweta asks if they are near any hollong trees. Thooya remembers her mother finding flowers in her father's jacket for another woman and admits she likes helping them carry the burden of their failed marriage, equating it to her mother being haunted by her father, even though he was still alive. Riding in a taxi (with a male passenger in the back seat with them), Shweta enquires whether Thooya enjoys her work. She claims to be therapeutic for them, only for Shweta to scoff that she uses the money she earns from them to pay for her own shrink. Thooya admits that she'll probably continue to see clients and sees nothing wrong in them using words like `darling' or `whore' when they're together. Indeed, she reminds Shweta that she will also be at her man's beck and call if she marries and the tension between them feels palpable.

No longer speaking, the pair ignore each other, as they hang washing on an indoor line at the flat. When Nitin calls, Shweta sits in the courtyard, while he tells Thooya that he has heard the complaints against her and warns that he will turf her out if she keeps using his property for prostitution. He snipes that he may not be as well endowed as her other lovers, but he can make or break her and she remains silent as he asserts his rights to have her when he chooses.

Thooya gets a visit from Nitin's wife (Lovely Singh), who informs her that her infant daughter died in the flat after they were first married. She asks why Thooya has stopped having sex with her husband because he has started to pester her and she isn't amused. When Thooya says she doesn't want to do it and offers to pay rent, the wife asks if her roommate would be willing to service him. But Shweta has just pushed aside a suitor who was getting too ardent after a long kiss and she is concerned for Thooya when she comes home late and rings the doorbell. She goes into her room to ask if she is okay, but they spend a seemingly sleepless night in their own beds. The following morning, Nitin's wife puts an envelope in the grille of the front door and the film ends with what we can only take to be Shweta letting the tide lap against her bare feet on the beach and Thooya coming to stand beside her.

Full of glances and gestures with manifold meanings, this is a delicate drama with an enigmatic ending that leaves viewers with lots to think about. Naaz Shaikh and Sumi Baghel couldn't be better as the conflicted flatmates, as they emerge from their work personas to confide and trust in each other, with the two scenes in which they hold conversations through walls being as deftly played as they are adeptly stages. The debuting Anuparna Roy evidently watched Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (1963) before shooting commenced, as every scene seems to be films through a half-open door, along a narrow corridor, or reflected in a fragment of mirror to emphasis how cramped together Thooya and Shweta are and how easily a household object can come between them in their confined space. Godard moved Raoul Coutard's camera more than Roy does Debjit Samanta's. But her sense of composition is refined, most notably in the Jhuma phone call sequence, in which the characters are bathed in pink and green light in their respective cubby holes.

Yet, while Roy and editor Ashish Patel hit the perfect pace for the episodic action, one has to wonder why the film is so short, when more time could profitably have been spent outlining Shweta's background (she says nothing about her family) and watching the women get through the decidedly awkward getting to know phase. This seems to end somewhat precipitously, when Roy might have lingered over the absences, silences, and near misses in the way Kolkata couple Ritwick Chakraborty and Basabdatta Chatterjee do in Aditya Vikram Sengupta's excellent 2014 Bengali drama, Asha Jaoar Majhe (aka Labour of Love).

Even so, echoing Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine As Light (2024), Roy ably conveys the constraints imposed upon women in India's patriarchal society and the liberties that men take with their perceived power. Even one of Shweta's tele-customers demands daily phone contact after buying products from her. However, the introduction of Nitin's wife introduces a class element to proceedings, as she is quite prepared to condemn a woman on a lower rung to suffer indignity in order to spare herself (although it should be said that she has also suffered a tragedy and been been subjected to unwanted sexual pestering). Once again, the Shweta aspect might have been bolstered by some information about the company she works for, her terms and conditions, why she fetched up in Mumbai in the first place, and how such a respectable woman heard about a spare room in a sex worker's flat. For Roy, all that matters is that she did, leaving the rest of us wanting to know what happens next.

LADY.

Dance played an intriguing role in Samuel Abrahams's first two shorts, Connect (2010) and Hold on Me (2011). The former earned him BAFTA nomination. But his debut feature, Lady, appears to owe more to `Hung Out', the 30-minute sitcom pilot that Abrahams staged with some friends in 2010 for Channel Four's Comedy Lab series.

Under the impression he has been commissioned to make a documentary for Netflix, film-maker Samuel Abrahams (Laurie Kynaston) arrives at Ravenhyde Hall with his crew. He meets Lady Isabella (Sian Clifford), who appears at the door in sunglasses and strikes a couple of poses before inviting him inside. Flattering him about his BAFTA (when he's only been nominated), Lady Isabella searches around for an ice bucket and has an awkward encounter with her housekeeper, Becky (Juliet Cowan), who has forgotten all she had been told about making Isabella seem more of a friend than an employer.

Out in the garden, Isabella reveals that she had wanted to dabble in the art and runs the annual ` Stately Stars' competition to unearth talent and raise money for the underprivileged. Showing the crew to their rooms, she flirts inexpertly with Sam, who potters after her rather than imposing himself or explaining what he's after. Donning the latest in a line of hats, Lady Isabella video calls arts maven Olivier (Olisa Odele) and announces that she is going to enter her own contest this year so that the film has a crescendo. The link seems to freeze, but she is unable to close her laptop before Olivier confides to a colleague what a nightmare she is.

Wondering what he's got himself into, Sam calls his agent, Maddie, only for the crew to film him expressing doubts about the project in a way that makes it sound as if he is out of his depth and a bit afraid of Lady Isabella. When he sees them recording, Sam tries to make a joke of things, but the camera keeps rolling and he has to remind them that he is not the story.

Keeping his beanie on during dinner, Sam sits at one end of the long table, while Lady Isabella guzzles red wine at the other. He is spooked by finding a muntjac tooth in his pigeon pie and is surprised to learn that his hostess has a husband and a son named Jasper, who is at boarding school. She gets angry with him when he takes a call from his agent and locks him and the crew in a room when Sam threatens to quit because Netflix are not involved in the film at all.

As she offers to double their fees, Lady Isabella grabs the camera and urges Sam to keep filming her. She collapses and he notices that her hands have become invisible. He calls for an ambulance, only to be dismissed as a crank, while Lady Isabella careers between bathrooms looking for any medication that might help the situation. Convinced he's getting gold dust, Sam decides to stay and eavesdrops on her conversation with a doctor, who thinks Lady Isabella is being figurative when she claims she's becoming invisible. Spotting him creeping away down the hall, she orders Sam to be at the pool house first thing in the morning.

Following a close-up of Lady Isabella impersonating one of her portraited ancestors and a shot of a raven tapping on the camera lens, we see chatelaine painting a nude of Sam, reciting Lady Macbeth's `I have given suck' speech, and warbling atonally at the piano, as she tries to find a talent for the contest. Sam is nonplussed until he notices that Lady Isabella's left wrist has also become invisible and she panics.

She hides away the next day and ignores Sam's suggestion that she gets medical help. Believing the universe is making her suffer in ordee to create great art, Lady Isabella plays dead around the estate for a series of pictures and does an action painting in murky yellow on a floor canvas. Sam keeps filming, but she loses patience because she thinks he's sneering at her and her creations.

Sam joins Lady Isabella in her car, as she proceeds to drive at 4mph and then reverses when she loses her nerve. He tries to reason with her, but she accuses him of being a chauvinist about her driving. Pulling off her coat after having nearly backed into a tree, she discovers that her arms have vanished and she staggers back towards the hall, with Sam once again having been left looking inept and foolish.

Having been seen posing with her head poking out of a bowl of milky water filled with corks, Lady Isabella retreats to her room after ordering Sam to leave. He brings her a cup of tea and confides that he would want invisibility as his superpower because he often feels as if people don't notice he's there. She admits to having not left the house in five years and invites Sam to get stoned on mushroom oil with her. They play table tennis before she pushes him into the swimming pool. Lying in the garden while tripping, Lady Isabella explains that her marriage is purely one of convenience because her husband is gay. Reaching out, Sam touches her invisible arms and they have a moment of connection when he sees her appear to levitate because her legs have disappeared.

Next morning, the crew find Sam as he wakes in the trashed drawing room feeling sheepish and hungover. He's embarrassed when Lady Isabella swans in crowing about their night of passion and starts to feel queasy when she pours herself a glass of milk and tries to drink it in a sensual manner. She accuses him of being an unromantic lightweight. However, she also needs him to read a poem to accompany the piece of interpretive dance that she is now going to enter for the talent show. Suddenly camera shy, Sam admits that he is timid and blames the fact he loses so many jobs because he loses his nerve.

As they sit together in the evening, Lady Isabella informs Sam that her nether regions have vanished and she wants him to have a last look at her bosom. He tries to apologise for taking advantage of her, but she scoffs at the idea that he made the running. She offers to adopt him and he feels affronted because they have had sex and he is 30. Seeking to persuade him, she tells him that he would inherit the hall and could stop trying to be a film-maker because he's obviously no good at it. When he protests, she throws his phone in an ornamental pond and Becky comes out with a net to fish it out. When he tells her what her employer has just proposed, she reveals that Jasper had drowned in the lake five years ago and that Lady Isabella had blamed herself for taking her eye off him.

When Sam asks her about this next morning, Lady Isabella insists her son is at boarding school. She is busy putting the finishing touches to Stately Stars, when Sam rushes in to tell her that Netflix has loved his trailer and want to buy the concept. She is thrilled and cracks open a bottle of `sparkle darkle'. But she sees the footage and feels it makes her look like a freak and the pair argue and trade insults, with Sam calling her self-obsessed and she branding him a talentless hack with nothing to say (and who is rubbish in bed) before ordering him to leave.

In the courtyard, Sam tells the cameraman to stop filming him and tries to wrestle the camera from his hands. But he realises the crew has turned on him and considers him as ridiculous as he does Lady Isabella. A cutaway show Lady Isabella slamming Sam's head into a piano keyboard before we see her apologising to Becky for not treating her with enough consideration. As they hug, Lady Isabella's head vanishes and she removes her clothing to become totally invisible when Becky rushes off to get one of her pills. Noticingher gun is missing, Becky stops Sam from leaving and they search the house before realising that she will have gone to the lake.

They find her in a boat with the gun pointing up. She says she just wants to see her son again, but Becky and Sam talk her round and she agrees to compete in Stately Stars. The contest is over by the time they arrive, but Lady Isabella insists on donning her Ricky the Raven costume and performing before Olivier and the handful of malingerers. When Sam can't handle his lines, she removes the costume and everyone is astonished by her invisibility, as she encourages Sam (whose mouth is smeared with red lipstick) to speak his verse, as The Who's `Baba O'Riley' plays over the sound system. Becky notices that Lady Isabella is starting to reappear naked and she rushes the stage to cover her up. As she is led away, her husband arrives and she says it's good to see him.

Next day, Sam and the crew say their goodbyes. He offers to stay, but she tells him to go and find his voice. They hug. Inside, Lady Isabella realises he has left her all the footage to make a home movie, if she so chooses. She uncovers the statue of Jasper in the hallway and joins Becky to make a go of life again.

It's easy to see why some critics have detected a whiff of the Maysles classic, Grey Gardens (1975), in this bold, but undeniably scattershot satire on narcissisum and the need to be seen. Yet Sam Abrahams got the idea after stumbling across an aspiring influencer on YouTube and becoming fascinated by her desperate efforts to be noticed by people she would never see. For all its left-field wit, however, this is also a warning about social media's potential to damage and harm because users seeking self-validation put themselves in a vulnerable place and are often cruelly attacked by mean-spirited strangers who know nothing about them.

Writing with partner Miranda Campbell Bowling, Abrahams was also influenced by such surreal 1990s comedies as Harold Ramis's Groundhog Day (1993) and Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich (1999). But not everyone will get the joke, as this self-satisfied mockumentary struggles to raise more than the odd wry smile, in spite of the excellence of Fleabag alumna Sian Clifford, who couldn't be better as the twice-crowned face of Royal Ascot who has become the reclusive aristocratic answer to the Kardashians seeking a way out of the trauma that has cocooned her within her suffocating stately pile since the loss of her son. Not only does Clifford handle Lady Isabella's emotional quirks, vain delusions, and entitled tantrums in the best Scott Thomistic manner, but she also nails the physical magic realist comedy deriving from her incremental imperceptibility.

Playing a character self-guying based on the director, Laurie Kynaston is less effective, as his superiority complex is too obviously rooted in Simon Birdisms. However, he is also let down by Abrahams's failure to get round the fact that the camera crews always seem to be in the right place at the right time, sometimes providing coverage that feels more pre-planned than spontaneous. Nevertheless, Korsshan Schlauer's views of Somerleyton Hall in Suffolk are atmospheric, while production designer Agnieszka Debska and set decorator Sian Molloy make a neat job of turning an 1840s Anglo-Italian masterpiece into a warping tomb of bereavement and guilt. With Jonny Woodley's score underpinning the shifts from farce to pathos and Terri Higgins's costumes emphasising Lady Isabella's eccentric personality, this is certainly a well made and thoughtful film. It's just not funny, in the same way that Emerald Fennell's Saltburn (2023) wasn't.

MOMO AND THE TIME THIEVES.

A parable on the perils of capitalism and the brevity of existence, Michael Ende's 1973 children's book, Momo, has been adapted for the screen several times. The author himself narrated Johannes Schaaf's 1986 live-action version, which cast legendary Hollywood director John Huston as the custodian of time. Enzo D'Alò took an animated approach in 2001, which featured songs by the popular Italian singer, Gianna Nannini.

Now, Christian Ditter has revisited the text for Momo and the Time Thieves. Although he's more recently known for the English-language outings, Love, Rosie (2014) and How to Be Single (2016), he has a decent track record in his native Germany for reworking childhood favourites, as his 2008 take on Max von der Grün's The Crocodiles was both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. Indeed, Ditter directed one sequel, The Crocodiles Strike Back (2009), and produced the other, The Crocodiles: All For One (2010). His 2011 3-D adventure, Vicky and the Treasure of the Gods, was also released in the UK, although this latest venture is more message-driven.

In a city not unlike Rome, young Gino (Araloyin Oshunremi) works two jobs to help widowed mother Lilliana (Jennifer Amaka Pettersson) run her pizzeria. She wishes she could spend more time with her son and his younger siblings, Paolo (Maxwell Smith) and Maria (Skylar Blu Copeland). When not making deliveries in an electric buggy, Gino also works as a tour guide at an ancient ampitheatre that is home to Momo (Alexa Goodall), a flame-haired girl who claims to have always been around. She is friends with caretaker Bepo (Kim Bodnia) and has a reputation for being a good listener, who believes the entire universe is playing her a symphony and who helps people find solutions to their problems.

Such are her powers that she is of interest to Jackie (Laura Haddock), a mysterious woman dressed in grey who is preoccupied by time. She latches on to Lilliana, whose fear that the days are slipping by so quickly leaves her open to accepting a `greyclet', which flashes red when time is short and white when she has deposited spare time in the Timesavings Bank. Based in swish new headquarters, the Grey Corporation gives away lots of these wrist counters and Gino becomes enamoured of glamorous employee, Jenny (Madeleine Akua).

Momo, however, is suspicious of the company and its slogan, `Save Time to Spend Time'. When Jackie comes to the ampitheatre to win her over with the help of a floating spherical Bibibot, Momo uses her listening skills to coax the woman in grey into revealing that she belongs to a race that needs the hour-lilies generated by Time to stay alive (via special inhalers) and that the greycelets are a con to steal the time banked by unsuspecting humans.

As people become obsessed with saving time, they stop enjoying their leisure time and Momo decides to throw a party at the ampitheatre to get the citizens to relax. Meanwhile, Bepo witnesses a shocking sight after dozing off while working the late shift at a warehouse. He sees Jackie being interrogated and liquidated by Grey leader, John Richter (Claes Bang), for betraying the cause and he rushes back to warn Momo. Informing Gino what the Greys are up to, she leads a children's march on the corporate HQ. But Gino is lured inside by Jenny, while the other kids are won over by the Bibibots. Sensing his weak spot, Richter offers to Gino fame, as the PR face of the Timesavings scheme whose daily vodcasts will reach people through special contact lenses.

Time passes and Momo sees how tired Lilliana has become, as she tries to bank time to spend with her children. However, when she calls to make a withdrawal from her account, she is informed that there is a four-hour wait and she gives up. Warned by Bepo that Richter and his henchmen are dangerous, Momo trusts a tortoise named Cassiopeia, who conveys messages through luminous writing on her shell. As she can see 30 minutes into the future, Cass is able to guide Momo through the market to Never Lane, where she realises that she has to walk backwards across the courtyard to enter the clock-filled Nowhere House. Here, she is greeted by Master Secundus Minutius Hora (Martin Freeman), the white-haired administrator of Time, who shows her how hour-lilies are created by a giant pendulum that swings slowly over a pool of clear water. He warns her of the threat the Greys pose and Momo returns to the city in an effort to rescue Gino and eradicate them.

He is pleased to see her and they ride in a self-driving vehicle to the studio where he is due to broadcast. But he loses his nerve when Richter threatens his family. The Grey leader also renders Momo unconscious, but Cass finds her and they just beat a gang of Greys to Nowhere House. Hora asks her to find where the Greys store the stolen hour-lilies so that she can release them back into the world. But only one remains and he entrusts it to her, while he freezes time to give her 60 minutes to complete her task or everyone will remain inert forever.

As he's made of time, the Greys are immune from the freezing process and they enter the house, where Richter realises that Hora has tricked him. He leads his minions to the vault where the stash is held, with many perishing en route as puffs of pink powder. Momo follows behind and sees a static Bepo sweeping the bridge leading to the edifice housing the Grey vault. Cass helps her find the store in the basement and she avoids capture to confront Richter. He grabs the last petal out of her hand and calls her `a stupid girl' for destroying life - but she had popped a petal into her mouth and she has just enough time to see Richter disintegrate into dust and release the mound of pink into the reinvigorated world.

She gets a hug from Bepo and an apology from Gino, as Hora explains in narration that nobody remembered time stopping, as life resumed. But he reminds everyone that time is precious and that we should ensure that it is enjoyed, treasured, and never wasted by living in the moment.

Providing grown-ups with food for thought while their kids get involved the race against time, this is a solid, if slightly superficial adaptation of an influential tome that is more relevant than ever in our frantic, time-poor world. Indeed, Ende seemed to have a good take on the future, as we have acquiesced in the kind of society he warned against. Yet, while the digs at consumerism, exploitative productivity, and our readiness to follow social media trends are spot on, they never cut deep enough to force us to face the real reasons behind inequality and injustice. At least they don't overwhelm a suspenseful story that is plausibly told and admirably played. However, even though this is aimed at tweenagers, a bit more information about how time is extracted and where the Greys came from and why they chose this particular metropolis might not have gone amiss. The same goes for a suggestion of what everyone has learnt from their experience and how this might effect change going forward.

With their languorous delivery and menacing presence, Claes Bang and Laura Haddock make splendid pufferating villains, although Martin Freeman feels too young and uncharacterful for Hora. Fourteen year-old Alexa Goodall switches capably from being receptive to resilient, although the absence of backstory renders Momo overly enigmaic and she's so assured during the denouement that she never seems to be in real jeopardy. This was obviously Christian Ditter's decision, as it was to kick on with the Grey story before he had fully established Momo's ethereal emergence and the closeness of her bond with Gino, whose ambitions are as sketchily explored as his impact upon the populace as Richter's mouthpiece. At 22, Araloyin Oshunremi feels too old for the part, but it's been poorly written and lacks perhaps a little hip-hop edge to make it feel more contemporary?

Ralf Schreck and Eva Maria Stiebler's production design is higly effective, with the ampitheatre being modelled on the Colosseum and the Grey vault facility amusingly (and wholly unintentionally) resembling Count Binface. Frank Schlegel and Michael Wortmann also make a decent fist of the visual effects, from the hovering Bibibots to the pffting Greys, although the most pleasing image is the swooping pendulum in the hushed chamber at the heart of Hora's horological hideaway.

MERMAID BEACH.

Merophiles will already be familiar with the work of Glynis Johns in Ken Annakin's Miranda, Ann Blyth in Iving Pichel's Mr Peabody and the Mermaid (both 1948), Darryl Hannah in Ron Howard's Splash (1984), Sara Paxton in Elizabeth Allen's Aquamarine (2006), and Halle Bailey in Rob Marshall's The Little Mermaid (2023). To their number is now added Ellie Bindman in Mermaid Beach, an eco-parable for the summer holidays that was co-directed by Sam P. Green and Becca Hirani, with the latter using the name, Rebecca J. Matthews.

Teenager Lily (Ellie Bindman) has just moved to the West Wales coast with her younger sister, Sophia (Georgia Grace), who is less bothered about leaving her friends in London and more onboard with the fact that mum Claire (Marie Wilson) is expecting with their new stepfather, Jason (Andrew Rolfe).

Strolling on the beach, Lily meets Shane (Jack Taruschio Thomas), a trainee reporter for the local online newspaper, who sympathises with her for landing in such a backwater. He also recommends a quiet place for a swim, which is just as well, as Lily's lower half covers over with tail skin and a fluke after she picks up a glowing shell after having had a dip in the sun-dappled channel. Scootching across the sand, she discovers she can breathe underwater and talk to the marine life on the sea bed. Back on land, however, she is relieved when her new accoutrements disappear and she can walk home, even though the shell still forms a pattern on her thigh.

Claire has found a job assisting the local mayor, Martin (Christopher Morley), who is not looking forward to keeping an appointment with George Knapp (Sam Mark Williams), the owner of a local textile factory that is looking to expand. Jason works there and has hopes of promotion, which pleases Claire, even though the factory is linked by some with the increase in pollution in the coastal waters. Lily knows nothing about this, but is still contemplating what happened to her on the beach, when she picks up Sophie's blue-haired Maisie the Mermaid doll and looks pensive.

Ducking out of family night in front of an old film, Lily looks up mermaids online and discovers the embedded shell will react with sea water. She fills a pint glass with salt and pours some on the spot and her lower half changes immediately and she has to haul herself to the bathroom before her concerned mother comes to ask about the funny noises she can hear. With bubbles up to her chin, Lily reassures her that she's fine, but she now knows beyond doubt that she's become a mermaid.

Unable to resist, Lily slips out early for a swim. But she's disturbed by the amount of debris on the sea bed, which is killing some of the fish. Taking random snaps of the seashore, Shane realises he's caught a mermaid on camera and rushes home. Sent to fetch Lily home, Sophie runs down to the beach and claims to have spotted a mermaid and is hurt when Lily snaps at her that they are merely mythical. Arriving home, she gets a talking to from Claire, who feels entitled to a second chance after being a widow for five years and wishes that Lily could be nicer to her sister.

Shane puts his photo online and Jason shows it to Sophie to cheer her up at supper. He is suspicious that he has been given a 5% pay rise when he doesn't see how the factory could have earned such revenue. Claire is also bothered by the disappearance of an environmental report at the mayor's office. As for Lily, she is horrified that her secret is out and wonders how she can stop someone from identifying her. She goes to see Shane to ask him to print a retraction because he has misidentified a whale. He's out, but the mayor turns out to be his father and he tells Lily about his fascination with cryptozoology and shows her a photo taken by his father (Julian Snare) of a fluke sticking up out of the water.

Next morning, a crowd gathers on the sea wall to watch for the mermaid. Lily leaves Sophie with Shane and runs on to the beach (for some reason) to swim in her underwear. However, she is distracted by something noxious belching from a pipe and her fluke becomes entangled in a net. When her sister fails to return, Sophie runs into the sea to free her and is then upset that Lily had told her off when she had been the mermaid all along.

At home that night, Lily tells Claire and Jason about the pipe and he ties it in to secretive deliveries made to the factory. As Claire has a meeting with Knapp and the mayor, Jason volunteers to sneak into the office and check the delivery details and takes Shane with him to take photos. While everyone's away, Lily takes Sophie to the beach to apologise and thank her for her courage. Reluctantly, she tears part of the shell off her leg and places it on her sister's hand and it glows.

We see them swimming together as mermaids and sitting on the tideline, with Sophie asking why they can't use what they are to alert people about the damage being done to the oceans. Suddenly, Lily's mermy-sense kicks in and she realises that Jason and Shane are in trouble and they shuffle back into the water to help them. She can obviously see into the future, too, as they have only just let themselves into the office and it's Claire who is having problems, as she challenges Knapp about acting as if he was the mayor and demanding to know what happened to the eco reports. Martin tries to calm her down, but she resigns and he feels exposed because she might go public with what she knows.

Back at the factory, Jason and Shane are caught by a thuggish security guard and he calls a mate to manhandle them to the waterfront. They sneer about the riptide bearing them away, only for them to be washed into the water by a gush created by Lily's flicking fluke. The pair are relieved, but also excited to have the mermaid save them.

At a public meeting on the sea wall, the locals turn on the mayor before Knapp arrives to claim that he is the victim of a break-in and an attempt to besmirch his reputation using forged documents. He asks Ms Fields (Tish Piwowarek) from the environmental agency to test a water sample to prove it's clean. But Lily dives down to bring a piece of metal from the pipeline and shames Martin into admitting that the council has been taking hush money. The crowd boo Knapp, who slinks away, while Lily admits to Shane that she's a mermaid and everyone cheers.

Time passes and Jason becomes the factory manager, while Claire is elected mayor. Sophie dotes on her new sister, while Lily accompanies Shane to hear his grandfather describe the night he was rescued by a mermaid after falling overboard. He claims the pollution has driven the mermaids into deeper water and Lily vows to find them. Having told Shane that her gift comes from her late father's side of the family, she walks into the sunset to find her sisters and he promises to be there when she returns.

Completing a bumper summer for Welsh cinema after Celyn Jones's Madfabulous, Helen Walsh's On the Sea, and Marc Evans's Effi o Blaenau, Mermaid Beach recalls the storytelling gambits beloved of the Children's Film Foundation. Screenwriter Christopher Jolley competently assembles the plucky kids,, misunderstanding parents, shifty establishment figures, and empathetic veterans. Yet, this is a far cry from the horror films for which he and co-director Rebecca J. Matthews are better known.

That said, Matthews's has strayed from the genre path with producer Helen Grace before, when they collaborated on Cam Girls (2021), which was also released as Lockdowners in a trimmed version. This is markedly more wholesome, although Lily does seem to get away with pitching the two security guards into a dangerous riptide without any payback and we're not told how the mayor is punished for his corruption in office.

Christopher Morley's sofa chat with Ellie Bindman is the film's low-point, as it's awkwardly acted, poorly paced, and jerkily cut. Indeed, the performances aren't always polished, although this adds to the picture's homely charm. Some criticism has also been levelled at the quality of the mermaid costumes, but this is clearly a low-budget venture and the co-directors largely manage to overcome its limitations to impart an eco-aquatic message that will appeal to viewers of Sophie's age, who won't be that fussed about the authentic depiction of mermaidian anatomy. She is played with some spirit by Georgia Grace, whose lively rapport with the mid-twentysomething Bindman prevents the story's more emotional elements from becoming mawkish, in touching upon grief, blended families, self-discovery, acceptance, and a sense of belonging.

Cinematographer Raffaele Nocerino contributes some evocative views of Carmarthenshire's Pendine Sands, while the underwater photography is unshowily effective and is capably complemented by James Cox's twinkly score. It's just a shame that Jolley and the co-directors couldn't sort out the cumbersome conclusion and ducked the conversation between mum Claire and her nereid offspring.