This one will stick in your mind whether you love it or hate it. It’s like Fish Tank meets Kajillionaire.

In a magical and oftentimes distressing first act, primary school aged Maria (Lily-Beau Leach) lives with her mum who’s a hoarder. Their life is one of dumpster diving and missing school, PE kits lost under the detritus and rat babies as pets. But it is also one of magic as Cynthia (Hayley Squires) spins tales of imagination around every mundane moment. 

Cut to the second act and Cynthia is gone and Maria (Saura Lightfoot-Leon) is 16 and still with the foster mum Michelle (Samantha Spiro) who first took her in. She’s just finished school and she has the same boisterous, mischievous, adventurous relationship with her best friend Ellie (Pena Iiyambo) as she did with her mum. When former foster child 30 year old Michael (Joseph Quinn) comes to stay, Maria’s life begins to spin out of control. 

Director Luna Carmoon has recreated her memories of her Nan’s cluttered house and plays with ideas of smells triggering memories, both positive and negative, and how buried grief can come out suddenly and turn your life upside down. She does a good job at creating a world that is uncomfortable but we can see through Maria‘s eyes the magic in her memories of her mother.

Her interactions with Michael provide most of the drama and are often hard to watch, portrayed as consensual but being coercive and destructive in no small part due to the traumas that both have suffered. Joseph Quinn does a good job at making Michael believably charming to many, even though he has his own fragility and destructive nature.

Lightfoot-Leon is astounding and transfixes you with her representation of Maria as ferocious and fragile.  Carmoon said in the Q&A afterwards that she was looking for someone with a dancers body as there is something almost animal-like about Maria as a teen. The actors for both young and older Maria are spookily alike. 

The soundtrack is eerie and layered and ends with an absolute banger from Everything But the Girl. I don’t think this film is for everyone but it will stick with you.