Cosmo Jarvis – Movie Musings

Irish gangsters manipulate a violent but needy boxer in this well-made debut

Director: Nick Rowland

Cast: Cosmo Jarvis (Arm), Barry Keoghan (Dymphna), Niamh Algar (Ursula), Ned Dennehy (Paudi), Kiljan Moroney (Jack), David Wilmot (Hector), Anthony Welsh (Rob), Simone Kirby (Jules)

In rural Ireland a former boxer, Arm (Cosmo Jarvis), has found a new outlet for violence as an gang enforcer. But Arm is, at heart, a gentle soul, and his desire to belong and be part of a “family” is effectively exploited by the gang, especially his weaselly, bullying boss Dymphana (Barry Keoghan) who treats him like an affectionate pet-dog. His ex, Ursula (Niamh Algar), mother to his autistic son Jack, wants him to change his ways or stay out of their lives. But can Arm change?

Rowland’s film has a deliberately seedy quality to it, shot with a grimy intensity and crawling along on its belly among the mud and filth of Irish crime gangs. It’s a thrilling expose though of how crime takes and takes and is never satisfied. It’s turned Arm into a shell, throwing him the odd bone of inclusive comfort, then ordering him out like a rabid dog to hand out another beating to anyone who has crossed the family.

The main target is a man the heads of the family suspect of raping their teenage niece – although whether this was genuine sexual assault or simply a question of perverse family pride is left open. Arm opens the film by handing out a vicious beating – albeit one where he carefully lays out the ground rules with his victim before going about it with a punch-clock sense of duty. It’s what Arm is used for – a not that bright, piece of muscle who, despite his intimidating presence, will do (almost) anything for anyone who makes him feel wanted.

Even if the main person who does is as a dastardly as Dymphana. Keoghan is very good as a snide, insidious small-time crook, who openly calls Arm his dog and fills his head with prejudices and suspicions designed to keep him in his place. If he’s the dark angel, then Ursula is the good one: Algar equally brilliant as a decent, kind, supportive person who has come to the end of her tether with a man who she now feels is a danger to the fragile temperament of her autistic son.

It’s the fate of this son that will penetrate through the dead exterior shell that surrounds Arm, and make him start to question his own life. There is more than a hint that the fragile, timid, surly Arm – beautifully played, with a haunting gentleness under the violent exterior by Cosmo Jarvis – suffers from a similar condition to his son. Like him, he finds rage he can’t control bubbling up inside him (Arm is hopelessly ill prepared for helping his son during Jack’s emotional outbursts). He at times lacks an emotional intelligence to understand how people are treating him and why. It’s something Ursula knows and recognises – and why she gives him as many chances as she does.

Like his son, Arm finds himself calmed by engagement with animals (the title comes from Jack’s therapy sessions, horse riding). He also, buried somewhere in him, has a strong sense of right and wrong and eventually finds the courage to question his orders, as he begins to understand he really belongs not with them but with his ‘true’ family. His motivations shift from simply pleasing his masters to finding the money Ursula needs to move to Cork and place Jack in a special-needs-school, a need for his son that he slowly learns to place above his own wants and desires.

Eventually this explodes into scenes of retributive violence, shot by Rowland with an immersive intensity (there are some particularly uniquely filmed country-lane car-chase scenes, with the camera mounted on the car at an unusual angle). The violence that has lurked only just beneath the surface of the crime family, bubbles savagely to the top as it’s made clear that even the slightest deviation from what the family wants or expects from its enforcer will never be tolerated.

At times, Calm with Horses is a little too reminiscent of other crime dramas: for all its intelligent and skilful construction and playing, there isn’t a lot that feels really original here. Its influences are plain, but what it has is an intelligent empathy for its characters, and their situations, that constantly rewards you. At times, these characters surprise you with how far they will go: at others they disappoint you with their selfishness. But, thanks to the acting and direction, they always feel real.

Calm with Horses is an impressive debut, confident and exciting. Jarvis is superb as an inarticulate, unaware gentle-ish giant, with Keoghan and Algar outstanding in support (both were BAFTA nominated). It’s grimy, matching the dangerous world its set in, but it also has flashes of hope and understanding in it, little moments of calmness that pepper the darkness. It’s a fine crime drama.

Florence Pugh is either a feminist icon or a ruthless monster in this Gothic drama

Director: William Oldroyd

Cast: Florence Pugh (Katherine Lester), Cosmo Jarvis (Sebastian), Naomi Ackie (Anna), Christopher Fairbank (Boris Lester), Paul Hilton (Alexander Lester), Golda Rosheuvel (Agnes), Anton Palmer (Teddy)

On a rural estate in Northumberland in 1865, Katherine (Florence Pugh) enters a loveless marriage with Alexander (Paul Hilton), son of landowner Boris (Christopher Fairbank). The marriage is a disaster, with the couple incompatible and Katherine bored and trapped with no friends or allies. When Alexander and Boris travel for business, she finally gets the chance to explore her surroundings and enters into a passionate sexual relationship with estate worker Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis). When Boris – but not Alexander – returns, Katherine begins a chain of events that will see her commit a series of increasingly shocking crimes to hold onto the things she wants.

Oldroyd’s film is adapted by Alice Birch from a Russian short story, and is told with an icy, observatory coldness that doesn’t flinch from the increasingly sociopathic ruthlessness of its lead character. The film at first seems like it will set out a feminist fable, of a trophy wife struggling against the neglect and imprisonment of forced marriage. But, as it progresses, any pretence that Katherine is a feminist hero is stripped away: she is modern only in the most dreadful sense – a woman who will willingly commit almost any act of ruthlessness to safeguard her interests.

Playing Katherine, the film is blessed with a star-making turn from Florence Pugh. Only 19, Pugh gives a performance of such stunning depth and intelligence from a young actress that possibly hasn’t been seen since Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures. She’s a master of outward stillness and inscrutability, while always communicating the raging whirlpool of emotions underneath the surface. She’s fiercely intelligent, viciously ruthless, frequently observes other characters silently and can twist her face into a mocking defiance. Pugh also communicates the desperate emotional need for connection that motivates this woman, her willingness to go to such shocking lengths motivated by that yearning for a love that she has never known.

Oldroyd is careful not to present her a Gothic monster (would certainly be easy to do so!). The film is careful to outline how unwanted and ill-treated she is by Alexander and his father. Boris (a bullying Christopher Fairbank) ignores and talks down to this person-as-a-piece-of-property, basically just an unlooked-for freebie with some land, who is failing to get on with the production of an heir. Alexander (Paul Hilton, superbly weak and dripping with contemptuous bitterness) has no interest in his wife, his sexual interest restricted to ordering her to strip and face the wall while he pleasures himself. Neither of these characters ever have anything like a conversation with her, instead speaking to her like a dog or malfunctioning appliance.

So, you can see why she is so drawn to the passion of Sebastian – and also, perhaps, why she might find this cocky but not-exactly-sharpest-tool man an attractive chance for her to wear the trousers for once. Their couplings have a sexual urgency and passion to them that is lacking for anything else in the film. But we never see them as emotional or intellectual equals. There is no scene of romance, bonding or conversational or unsexual emotional connection with them. Katherine becomes obsessed with Sebastian – but it seems to be at least as much an obsession with the sex and the sense of control he brings her, as much as it is Sebastian himself.

As Sebastian, Cosmo Jarvis is initial bluster and wide-boy charm that strips away to reveal a man far more timid, scared and increasingly out-of-his-depth with what he’s got caught up in. For all his Lady Chatterley’s Lover physicality, Jarvis has a real vulnerability in his eyes and a certain little-boy lost quality. His panic and shock as event balloon become increasingly tragic.

Equally affecting is the terror of Naomi Ackie’s maid, torn between different sides. Like Pugh, Ackie is superb at suggesting emotional torment under a still surface and her character Anna frequently finds herself the mute observer of increasingly dangerous events, unable to influence them.

The film is shot with a coolness that at times makes it hard to connect with emotionally. In many ways this is a horror film, with a creeping intimidation, scoreless backdrop and a chilly aesthetic of empty rooms and muted colours. There are some bravura scenes: a life-changing breakfast scene is shot with a terrifying but suggestive stillness, just as it is played by Pugh with a chilling unreadability. Oldroyd’s film masterfully uses a number of simple and unflashy camera set-ups that build up to an overwhelming feeling of dread.

And some of this stuff is hard to watch. Two killings are shown in disturbing detail, enough to haunt your dreams. But the film wisely just presents the facts and avoids judgement – however implied that might be. It also makes for an intriguing condemnation of avarice – everyone in the film seems to be longing for something, but none of them find that struggle was worth it. And at its centre is a intriguingly unknowable and unreadable woman, who only becomes more alarming the more we find out about her.

Lady Macbeth is sometimes a little cold and distant for its own good. But its hauntingly grim and has a stunning, career-making performance from Florence Pugh. Filmed with creeping dread, it’s a cold, disturbing film that will linger with you.