Fold, The

Stars: Catherine McCormack, Dakota Blue Richards, Marina Stoimenova, Owen Teale, Oliver Dimsdale, Sarah Buckland, Kate Hollowood

Director: John Jencks

Deeply disturbed by the suicide of one of her two daughters 10 months earlier, priest Rebecca Ashton (McCormack) seeks refuge in the Cornish parish of St Erth, where she drinks and smokes to excess and, while helping out at the local centre, becomes obsessed with a buxom - and equally disturbed - Bulgarian girl (Stoimenova), overcoming the girl's suspicions and tendencies to violence by improving her English so that she can apply to art college.

Is the Rev Mrs Ashton's interest sexual or motherly? We're never quite sure and it's possible it isn't either.

It's a long time since we've sen the once star-billed McCormack in a leading role for the cinema, but this far-too-heady and combustible brew is hardly much of a welcome-back present. Dialogue just about passes muster, but the pace is slow and supporting performances iffy. Enforced concentration on a multiplicity of Cornish-wave shots breaking against the rocks or shore may eventually cause the eyelids to droop.

David Quinlan

UK 2013. UK Distributor: Miracle Communications. Colour (unspecified).
88 minutes. Not widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 1, Drugs 1, Swearing 1.

Review date: 22 Mar 2014