Peter Bradshaw’s ★★★★ Review of Rare Beasts

In her directorial debut, Piper announces herself as a truly thrilling film-maker with this bleakly brilliant inversion of the cutesy London love story

★★★★

Romcoms are about love and they want to be loved. Billie Piper’s anti-romcom is about something else – and it wants something else.

Rare Beasts is a bold experiment in nerve-jangling confrontation: it has the structure and ingredients of romantic comedy but turns everything on its head. On paper, it could be made by Richard Curtis: there are attractive views of London, an awful date in a restaurant, bittersweet scenes with parents, reflective moments by the river, a Bridget Jones-y media job, a glamorous wedding scene and even a cameo for Lily James. But everything goes wrong. Billie Piper’s movie refuses to read the room; it ignores the traditional cues for comedy and gentleness and the learning of life lessons. It is on a spectrum of its own.

The movie screeches when it should soothe; where the heroine should find love, she finds absence; where she should show feminist solidarity, she confesses she still needs a man; where there should be closure, there is nothing. The last time I saw something as bleak as this was at the Samuel Beckett festival in Enniskillen. It isn’t an easy watch but the fierce, focused intelligence of Piper’s film-making is exhilarating.

Read the full review here