A Banquet (2021) Review

A millennial angst hangs over Ruth Paxton’s directorial debut. It seeps into the performances and every corner of the saturated and shadowy cinematography. As the real world continues to spiral, horror cinema is likely to lean further on the kind of dread simmering here.

Young adult Betsy (Jessica Alexander) appears to be coping with the recent death of her terminally ill father. As are her mum Holly (Sienna Guillory) and younger sister Isabelle (Ruby Stokes). But their homelife is upended when Betsy disappears into the woods one night at her boyfriend’s party. Beneath a blood moon, she emerges altered, distant and discombobulated. The situation does not improve over the following few days. Particularly when Betsy announces she will no longer be eating, and suffers dramatic convulsions when ingesting the smallest morsel. Bizarrely, she continues to show no signs of weight loss.

Compounding this is Betsy’s belief that she has been chosen as herald for both a looming apocalypse and a wondrous new dawn.

Justin Bull’s screenplay sets most of the action in the family’s capacious modernist home, similarly comfortable neighbouring houses, or the surgeries of expensive private doctors. Yet, Betsy’s concerns cannot be solved with a liberal application of money. Nor the rational discussions she has with her educated, empathetic mother. An existential malady has rooted in the young woman’s mind which cannot be cured by middle class comforts; in a world inexorably headed for disaster the only changes possible are psychological and physical.

If this is in fact all just anxious fantasy. The veil of ambiguity Paxton drapes over the story is one of A Banquet’s key strengths. Clues are offered to the veracity of Betsy’s outlandish claims. Doubts are thrown upon her motivations, particularly from Lindsay Duncan’s formidably no-nonsense grandma. Revelations of past events further muddy understanding of the characters’ dilemma. A whiff of supernatural possibilities wafts under their noses. We could have done with a sustained uncertainty throughout. The closing scenes appear to settle for a definitive answer, unravelling some of the good work in the first hour.

What cannot be faulted are the performances and design. Alexander brings a determined pragmatism to Betsy’s acceptance of her situation, complemented by the heartbroken desperation Guillory conveys as her distraught mother. In a smaller number of scenes, Stokes sells the conflicted resentment of a talented, overlooked sibling.

Appropriately for a tale of body dysmorphia and fear of food, Paxton shoots in uncomfortable close-ups and extreme close-ups. Pores and micro-hairs are crisply captured by David Liddell’s cinematography, while food appears either over-ripe or brittle to the tongue. In a neat piece of design, meals are repeatedly served on inky-coloured plates, further spoiling their appeal.

Impenetrable blacks and sterile beiges and whites dominate the colour scheme, placing A Banquet somewhere between the worlds created by David Cronenberg, David Lynch and Todd Haynes. Those three directors are celebrated for bringing physical and psychological distress to their movies. Paxton and Bull may join their ranks if they capitalise on the promise offered here.

Movie Rating: