Joel Fry-days: The End We Start From (2023, R)

*Premise spoilers, including one vague spoiler about Joel Fry’s presence in the film*

One morning near the start of Joel Fry-days, I watched the trailers for all his movies to get a feel for them. The End We Start From was definitely one of the ones that piqued my interest the most, even as the trailer left me speculating that there wouldn’t actually be much of Joel Fry in it. A beautiful, brutal, very human film.

An expectant mother gives birth on the day her world turns upside down. London is being hit with torrential flooding, and as soon as she’s discharged from the hospital, the woman, her husband, and their new baby have to get out of the city. They search for safety and shelter across a swiftly changing landscape where people are growing angry and afraid, clinging to what they have.

(Side note: the main character is credited on IMDb simply as the Woman, while all the other characters are credited with a single initial.)

It’s technically a disaster movie, maybe even an apocalypse movie, but it doesn’t exactly feel like that. Instead, it feels like a moving character drama in which one woman struggles to hold onto herself as she fights to keep herself and her baby alive. It’s a climate change film that focuses mainly on the human toll—not just lives lost in the disaster itself, but lives lost, altered, and upended in the aftermath. With people fleeing London in droves, the towns and villages on higher ground are closing their entry roads. There are too many people with too few resources, and there are so many with nowhere to go.

In this sense, one thing I really like about this movie is how it opens on these characters who don’t realize how much their world is about to change. There’s a lot of talk about people who left London too late, those who either couldn’t get out or had nowhere left to turn when they did leave. In the hospital, the Woman is confused to learn that they can’t go home, and her husband R simply tells her, “The whole street’s gone.” It’s a slow realization that this isn’t merely rain, then that it’s not a matter of simply driving north to R’s parents’ house, then that this isn’t just a question of finding somewhere to wait out the floodwaters for the short term. 

The film is directed by Mahalio Belo, who did Requiem (and who cast Joel Fry in the Persuasion adaptation that was taken from us too soon!!) She doesn’t shy away from the bleakness of the story while still capturing beauty and connection. This is a movie that is just so full of human moments, whether it’s the Woman sharing a laugh with another new mother she meets in a shelter, sharing a meal and a dance with a fellow traveler, or breaking down in tears while she’s playing peekaboo with baby Zeb. “Where am I, Zeb?” she asks, trying to maintain her singsongy mommy voice even as she cries. “I don’t know.” Amid all the devastation, we’re shown points of light, both in the Woman’s present and in the sunlit flashes of her memories.

Even though they’re very different films, I found myself reminded a little of Wander Darkly. Both are very grounded depictions of a woman’s extraordinary journey (physical and/or emotional,) both present the central relationship with such a soft intimacy, and both are very exquisitely shot. I can imagine that this one will stick with me for quite a while, much like Wander Darkly has.

Jodie Comer is just excellent as the Woman. Her performance is so real and human, by turns naive, heartbreaking, and hopeful, surprisingly funny in moments and quietly courageous in others. The movie features plenty of other fine British actors, including Nina Sosanya and Mark Strong as R’s parents, Katherine Waterston as the Woman’s new friend in the shelter, and Benedict Cumberbatch as a man whose path briefly crosses with hers.

Joel Fry plays R. In the trailer, the only shots of him seemed to be flashbacks, so while it was clear that he was playing Comer’s lover/spouse, I had my suspicions that he was either 1) dead, and the movie was about her having to move forward on her own or 2) separated from her, and the movie was about her attempt to find her way back to him. One of those is sort of right (for the sake of spoilers, I won’t say which one,) but he’s actually in more of the movie than I expected. While Fry’s role eventually switches over to mainly flashback appearances, the Woman and R are together for about the first 40 minutes of the film. I still would’ve liked more, obviously, but I 100% get why this becomes a story of the Woman trying to keep herself and Zeb safe on her own. And since I’d prepared myself for not much of Fry at all, I consider the amount of screentime we do get from him to be kind of a bonus!

This is such a lovely performance. Sticking with the theme of “characters who don’t realize they’re in the opening of a disaster/apocalypse movie,” R basks in the wonder of being a new father and tells the Woman how amazing she is. When the nurse advises her to try to pee and she’s able to, R beams down at the baby and cries, “She did it!” in a sweet, admiring tone. He’s reassuring as they flee the city and mildly bickers with his dad over whether or not they should have seen this coming. At night, he cuddles with the Woman in his childhood bedroom, and during the day, he makes cute faces while he plays with Zeb.

But as the characters start to realize the enormity of what they’re dealing with, R is hit hard. Although I won’t spoil the details, they’re forced to recalibrate their plan right on the heels of an incredibly traumatic experience for him. Fry does a beautiful job with these scenes: the Woman asking if he wants to talk about it and R admitting he can’t, R sitting in the tub hugging his knees to his chest, R choking back tears as he insists that he can be the one to undertake something risky that directly echoes with the source of his trauma. It’s deeply affecting to watch him go from a kind, gentle rock to a terrified, beaten-down man who thinks he’s failing his family—still kind and gentle, but so battered. Just fantastic work here.

Accent Watch

Southern British English.

Recommend?

In General – Yes. It can be a bit slow at times, in that indie-drama way, but I thought this film was wonderfully done.

Joel Fry – Yes! Even if I was left wanting a lot more of R, Fry turns in such a strong performance here.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, violence, language, drinking/smoking, and brief sexual content.

 

Joel Fry-days: Diggers (2023)

This is an odd little short, more about mood/notion than tangible story. It’s also the shortest one I’ve watched so far, with the credits starting right around the six-and-a-half-minute mark. So yeah, this review may very well be longer than the short itself.

Two men walk into the woods to dig a hole. In between their work, they discuss their lives.

As I said, not much in the way of a story here. Certain questions are left ambiguous, and certain surprises pop up late in the game. For the most part, though, this is just a little piece between these two characters, with the question of the hole they’re digging widening amid their gentle banter. Joel Fry and Cary Crankson (the other actor in this short) both get a story credit alongside the writer/director. Not sure if that means they were actually writing it together or if it means a fair amount of the dialogue is improvised.

But for all that there’s not a lot here, I still found myself liking it. It put me in the mind of Shakespearian grave diggers, or maybe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Watching them dig and talk, there’s some softly pleasant humor as they misunderstand each other, and they hint a little at the philosophical of the mundane. Not I think this approaches the feat of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, obviously, but that’s the vibe I got.

Joel Fry plays Griffin. From the banter, we know more facts about him than we do about the other digger, Michaels. Griffin’s been saying for years that he’s going to quit smoking, he’s a relatively new dad, and his wife makes him put piccalilli on his sandwiches. These small details give us a bit of a snapshot of this man, while the tone and tenor of Fry’s performance gives some texture to those details. 

Griffin is dwelling heavily on how being a dad changes things for him, but he balks when Michaels asks him about fatherhood. “Well, when you say ‘fatherhood,’ it makes it sound like I’ve been doing it for ages,” he counters. “It’s only been six months.” He’s not able to engage with the question until Michaels amends it to “dadness.”

Accent Watch

London.

Recommend?

In General – Maybe. I like the feel of it.

Joel Fry – Maybe. It’s not a must, but I enjoy what he does here.

Warnings

Thematic elements.

Other Doctor Lives: Time: Series 2, Episode 3 (2024)

*Spoilers from episode 2*

Season finale time! This was a quick one to run through. The finale gives us some harrowing moments in the lives of our three women, along with some moments of breakthrough/catharsis.

Here’s the biggest spoiler from last week. At the end of episode 2, Kelsey went into labor. However, none of the prison staff were available because they were dealing with a crisis elsewhere: Orla panicked when her phone money ran out and the call dropped in the middle of an important conversation with her son Kyle, and in her desperation to be allowed to talk to him some more, threatened her cellmate’s life. Abi, who used to be a nurse, was the one to deliver Kelsey’s baby.

That’s where we begin episode 3. Orla has just gotten out of solitary confinement and is forced to deal with the consequences of her actions. Kelsey has been moved to the mother-and-baby unit, but a visit from Adam leads to a massive fallout. As the other inmates continue to harass Abi, she finally decides to open up about the circumstances of her crime.

Everyone’s story has some really awful stuff in it today, and the three main actors handle the material with care. When Adam gets her in trouble, Kelsey is frantic, knowing that any infraction will jeopardize her custody of baby Daniel. She’s desperate to explain herself, and the officer who’s been escorting her to doctor’s appointments throughout her pregnancy is sympathetic but implacable. And while the overall direction of Abi’s story is what I expected, it’s heartbreaking to hear her tell it and watch it play out in flashbacks. Tamara Lawrance gives a really stellar performance here, offering the portrait of a mother at the end of her rope.

This episode definitely cements that the series portrays the prison staff—and the criminal justice system on the whole—as too compassionate to feel genuine. Everyone who works with the inmates is presented as “in it for the right reasons,” caring about their well-being and wanting to help them get their lives back on track. There’s a scene where Orla receives a bit of good news, and an officer actually gives her an encouraging wink! While we see numerous ways that the system is putting a wrecking ball through these women’s lives, it’s seemingly never the fault of the people working within it. Everyone has the best of intentions, and they’re oh-so-sympathetic that this is happening, but there’s nothing they can do. For a show that’s not afraid to get gritty or heartwrenching, this aspect is painted so rosily that it takes me out.

With everything that Kelsey and Abi are going through, Orla’s story feels more mild in comparison, even though she’s not having an easy time of it. Her rash, desperate actions from the last episode haven’t done anything to help her relationship with Kyle, and through her, we also get to see another way that the system lets people down upon their reentry into society.

Jodie Whittaker’s performance is still excellent. Her best moments here are all a bit spoilery, so I won’t go into too many details. But there’s a strong scene where she’s telling a story about her mother, one that acknowledges the complicated nature of love with a really flawed person. I also really like a scene where she gets upsetting news from one of the officers. As we’ve seen from her before, it’s an instance where Orla can’t fully believe that this is really happening to her. However, by this time, she’s learned not to come in hot making demands. At first, she honestly thinks the officer is joking, and Whittaker does a great job of showing how this news slowly sinks in for Orla.

Final thoughts:

Accent Watch

Northern.

Recommend?

In General – I think so. Be aware of the heavy subject matter and the way the story pulls its punches in its depiction of the prison staff, but overall, I thought this was pretty well done.

Jodie Whittaker – I would. Whittaker’s a talented actress who’s played a lot of thankless roles in her career, so I appreciate seeing her in projects that remind you how good she is.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements (including post-partum depression,) violence (including discussion about the murder of an infant,) language, sexual references, and drinking/smoking/drug use.