Confine   Starring: Alfie Allen, Eliza Bennett and Daisy Lowe Distributor: 20:20 Films RRP: £15.99 TTF009.UK.DR Certificate: 15 Release Date: 01 July 2013

Pippa has retreated from the world, at one time an international model; she now lives in seclusion, never leaving her flat. All that changes when, during the course of a robbery, Kayleigh breaks in, trying to lay low after the robbery went wrong. As the hours pass, the two women engage in a game of cat and mouse, one desperate to get the strangers out of her flat, the other willing to do anything, including murder, to remain free...

Confine (2013 - 1 hr, 17 min, 33 sec) is a psychological thriller, directed by Tobias Tobbell. The film won five awards and was nominated for a further fourteen. I have to say, that this bemused me as I thought the film had two grave faults, a weak script and an under developed Pippa.

Pippa (Daisy Lowe), following a car crash, spends her days wandering around her flat, she collects art and engages in charity work via her computer, but her fear of the outside world means that she spends much of her time on the edge of hysteria. She does not even feel save within her own self created cocoon.

Kayleigh (Eliza Bennett) needs some place to hide out, since her most recent burglary has gone very wrong, stuck in a bad situation she takes Pippa hostage while she tries to work out how to get away safely. When her accomplice, Henry (Alfie Allen), arrives and discovers that things have progressed to kidnapping, he freaks. So she ties him up and threatens to kill him if his relatives don’t take the fall for her. With her safety increasing looking like a lost cause Pippa tries to find ways of defeating Kayleigh.

The whole film takes place in a single space, it’s not a novel format and Hitchcock used it to great effect in Rope (1948). As such, the film sometimes feels like a filmed play, rather than a feature. For the film to work, you really needed two strongly motivated females, at loggerheads, one trying to escape the other to survive. The main problem is how Pippa is written. She is weak, she is even unable to fire Kayleigh’s gun when she gets hold of it almost immediately after the home invasion. She comes over as such a weak character that it’s very difficult to sympathise with her. For most of the film she remains in passive victim mode.

Eliza Bennett however, gives a very strong performance as the ever so slightly unhinged Kayleigh. She is able to combine a playful vivacious nature with a layer of imminent threat, her performance dominates every scene. Her erstwhile partner in crime, Henry is played by Alfie Allen, who has recently played Theon Greyjoy, in Game of Thrones. It’s a small part, but he makes it memorable, and against these two, Daisy Lowe’s Pippa hardly ever shines on the screen.

Overall, the director makes good use of the confined nature of the set, but the script really could have been stronger, allowing Pippa much more to do apart from playing weakly against two stronger actors. The picture is clear with a 2.0 audio track. There are no extras.

6

Charles Packer