PEOPLE who find visual creativity underpinning a film equally with narrative substance may well rate director Rufus Norris and writer Alecky Blythe’s film as a minor treasure.

“London Road” takes place in the Sussex town of Ipswich with five 2006 murders of women who sold sex along its footpaths. The media reaction spread throughout Britain, far beyond the shadow of the two gasometers towering above the road. The story became a stage musical, with lyrics derived from what residents told police and the prying media. The film is its third incarnation.

While it’s far from being mainstream cinema entertainment, I found it agreeable, challenging, humane, passionate, sympathetic. Its plot is not a plot, rather, an account of something that engaged and bothered a small community for months before good police work and scientific doggedness came up with a name that led to a conviction.

We never see the killer. We see police only during the initial response to the deaths. In a large cast, only two (Olivia Colman and Tom Hardy) are known well enough to recognise.

Production designer Katrina Lindsay, art director Mark Raggett and set decorator Neesh Ruben should feel proud of the film’s visual elements. The interaction among the residents is sometimes a surprise given the disparate insularity of their social levels. How well do you know your neighbours?

The residents wanted an end to sex workers soliciting kerb-crawling clients on London Road’s footpaths. They are not villains. The closing sequence is powerfully poignant as, from a platform on a gasometer looking down on residents celebrating with a street party and flower show, one of them watches the collapse of her livelihood.

At Palace Electric