MIFF NOTES: Catch Me Daddy (2014, Dir. Daniel Wolfe)

Our screening of Catch Me Daddy was greeted with a solid number of walk outs. That in itself is not surprising. It happens frequently at festivals. What was surprising with this film from ex-music video director Daniel Wolfe is that the majority of these walkouts happened during the film's final scene.

Given that the film's press puts it out there that the film is based on the true stories of "honour" killings in Britain, it's not much of a push to guess what the final scene entails. It is telling, therefore, that, for many, the film, which is relentlessly bleak for a fair proportion of its 97 minute runtime, hadn't justified its stance well enough to justify its gruelling climax. For my part, I stayed in my seat but I was not without my own reservations.

Catch Me Daddy's screenplay, written by Wolfe and his brother Matthew, is more interested in presenting than commenting on, or even delving below the surface of, this highly charged topic. It's an approach leaves their protagonist, Laila (Sameena Jabeen Ahmed), a young pink haired girl on the run from her bloodlusty (but apparently very loving) father, feeling more like a news story than a character. To compound this, the apparent attempt to add balance to the scenario (and I say apparent because the lack of subtitles to the substantial tracts of Urdu throughout hampers insight) comes off as misguided. This is not a topic crying out for objectivity.

Stepping back from those misgivings, Wolf and his cinematographer, Robbie Ryan, pull in some impressive atmospherics from the Yorkshire Moors, fuelling their bleak themes with  bleak, night-shrouded visuals. The music, a collaboration between Wolfe and ambient / experimental / drone artist, Daniel Thomas Freeman, stands out. Performances are solid all round, though perhaps not robust enough for the material, again more an issue with the writing.

★★☆

Edit: Turns out the lack of subtitles may have been a projection error.

Disclaimer: Due to excessive work and excessive film going, MIFF posts are going to be pretty sketchy this year. I'll come back to some of the better ones and write them up proper-like if the mood takes.