The Blue Tower

This elegantly crafted film by British writer-director Smita Bhide deserves the plaudits it has won (including Best UK Feature at Raindance last year) for its beautiful cinematography, the account it gives of London, and its cleverly constructed atmosphere - a dense, syrupy feeling of dread is leavened by moments of down-to-earth humour. And all this is accomplished on a tiny sliver of a budget. Bhide is a genuine talent, as is DP Annemarie Lean-Vercoe. But there's a hollowness somewhere in here, as if its emotional heart has been allowed to drift a little off-centre to make way for the inventive camerawork.

Anti-hero Mo (Abhin Galeya), clearly a loner by inclination, has somehow found himself married to prize catch Asha (Manjinder Virk), with an intimidating set of in-laws. His only blood relative is a rich but tight-fisted auntie (Indira Joshi playing 'cantankerous old biddy' to perfection). With the air of a man not quite sure what to do with himself, he watches his aunt count her shoeboxes full of money, tries to find a job, and drives around Southall in his beloved but knackered old car. In film iconography, cars almost always represent freedom, but Mo seems to have given up on even the possibility of escape. Until he meets his aunt's new nurse Judy (Alice O'Connell), who admires him for the intellect he isn't really using, and the precarious balance he's found starts to unravel.

The love story between Judy and Mo is somehow one of the film's weaknesses, though both the actors bring a feverish, distracted intensity to their roles. We see that they really, really fancy each other, but when declarations of love start flying around, it's a little bit surprising - as if a charming one-night-stand suddenly wanted to talk about wedding venues. The Bonnie And Clyde feel the film seems to be aiming for ends up feeling diluted, but on the other hand, perhaps Bhide's intention is to expose Mo and Judy as childish fantasists. It's strangely difficult to say, and this atmosphere of either/or pervades the film, summed up in its central image of two opposing towers.

It's partly to its credit that nothing in The Blue Tower feels inevitable. But at the same time one wonders if this feeling that anything could happen is because of a scantiness in the characterisations. For example, we discover early on that Mo is orphaned. But what does this mean to him, how and when did his parents die, how long has he been tending to his aunt? Audiences don't need to be told everything but it's hard to make sense of Mo's resentment and indifference without any context. Then again, filmmakers have long used indecisive drifters as a way of exploring places and events at arm's length. Half-engaged and half-remote, this kind of character almost mimics the action of the camera, watching without special judgment.

Locations are well used, and London’s grainy bricolage comes across beautifully - it's good to see it treated with the same cinematic tenderness that tends to be afforded American cityscapes. The west London district in which the film is set is a distinctive world, sometimes called Little India because of its British Indian population, and Bhide plunges us into it with consummate confidence, neither over-explaining nor under-realising. Yet a couple of choices seem simply whimsical - a trip to the city's only surviving horse market doesn't do much more than provide an opportunity for a joke about "Pakis and pikeys" and some more gorgeous camerawork.

In the end, The Blue Tower is sufficiently evocative and exquisitely wrought, from the fine performances to the shot-making, to make you forget any reservations. But it's a shame not to feel something weightier at the heart of such appealing material.