SEEKING a dystopian, futurist, socio-economic thriller that spends nearly two hours pulling no punches about its characters, amplifying emotional situations almost beyond breaking point, offering little to persuade us to even the briefest smile, confronting us with behaviour that lacerates our senses and personal values, and challenging us to understand what its makers wanted us to take from it?

If you are passionate about JB Ballard’s novels, you’ll just go wild about Amy Jump’s adaptation of this one for director Ben Wheatley to interpret.

A fine British cast plays characters occupying apartments cantilevered over two groups of levels in a massive high-rise building. People of lower status live on lower levels. Above them live the idle rich. It’s the not unfamiliar metaphor for a more global division of haves and have nots. Tom Hiddleston plays newly-moved-in Dr Laing who most of all seeks solitude. He’s not going to get it.

The film tells of the next three months among astringent emotions and abrasive relationships. The narrative descends into violence and accretion of unbinned garbage. Food may become scarce but nobody runs short of cigarettes or liquor. Love is rare even within marriages. Sex can be weapon or power.

One woman sitting along the otherwise empty row spent the whole film looking at not the screen but her iPhone. None of the three other audience members walked. Were they and I so transfixed by the sheer awfulness of what was flowing across the screen? Awfulness is no reason not to persevere in hope of explanation or alleviation.

At Dendy and Palace Electric

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