Sight&Sound - 04.2020

REVIEWS

April 2019 | Sight&Sound | 79

different ways and, as they attempt to deal with
their new reality – and, in the process, slowly
lose their minds – Finnegan pointedly leans
in to notions of gender and traditional societal
roles. As Tom, Eisenberg is skittish, selfish and
increasingly angry, putting all his focus on
digging an escape tunnel in the garden and
ignoring the child that has been foisted upon
them. In contrast, Poots brings raw emotion to
Gemma, who initially refuses to engage with
the boy but eventually falls into a maternal role

• spurred on by the very real threat Tom poses
  to the child – and attempts to show love and
  kindness. These do bring her fleeting moments

of connection, a brief glimpse of happiness

even, as she dances with the boy to the car radio,

but ultimately have no impact on the child’s

behaviour or the events unfolding around her.

Try as they might, whether through brute

force or gentle nurture, there’s simply nothing

Tom and Gemma can do to escape their

situation – one that, from the outside, looks

like everything they aspired to, but which has

turned out to be a hellish purgatory. And surely

that’s the most disturbing thing of all – that

modern happiness is a regulated construct to

which we all blindly subscribe, but which may

turn out to be a prison of our own making.

Housebound: Imogen Poots, Jesse Eisenberg

The lovely bones: Eden Kötting

Desperate to get on the property ladder, young couple

Tom and Gemma visit a housing development named

Yonder. Unimpressed by the cookie-cutter homes, they

attempt to leave – only to discover that they cannot

find their way out. They try again the next day, and the

next, but realise they are trapped. As the weeks pass

they are regularly delivered supplies, and then a box

containing a baby boy and a note: “Raise the child and be

released.” With the child growing at an exponential rate

and displaying increasingly strange behaviour, Tom and

Gemma initially try to ignore him. Tom busies himself

digging an escape tunnel in the garden. Grudgingly,

Gemma falls into a maternal role, protecting the boy

from Tom’s violent outbursts. Eventually, the child grows

into an adult and becomes a housing agent, with the

sole job of luring another young couple to Yonder.

Produced by

John Mc Donnell

Brendan McCarthy

Written by

Garret Shanley

Story

Garret Shanley

Lorcan Finnegan

Director of

Photography

Macgregor

[i.e. Miguel de Olaso]

Editor

Tony Cranstoun

Production Designer

Philip Murphy

Music by/Music

Producer/Arranger/

Keyboards/Guitars

Kristian Eidnes

Andersen

Sound Designers

Kristian Eidnes

Andersen

Jacques Pedersen

Costume Supervisor

Catherine Marchand

Visual Effects

Benuts

TGBVFX

Dupp Film

Frame

Space Office

Slowmotion

Windmill Lane VFX

Ta k e 5

©Fantastic Films

Limited, Frakas

Productions SPRL,

Pingpong Film

Production

Companies

A Fantastic Films

production in

co-production with

Frakas Productions,

Pingpong Film

In association with

Lovely Productions,

Fís Éireann/Screen

Ireland, XYZ Films,

Madrona Drive

With the support

of Eurimages,

The Danish Film

Institute – The Minor

Co-production

Scheme, Copenhagen

Film Fund, Wallimage

(Wallonia), the Tax

Shelter of the Belgian

Federal Government

Casa Kafka Pictures

Movie Tax Shelter

Empowered by

Belfius, the Creative

Europe Programme

• MEDIA of the
  European Union
  In co-production
  with VOO and Be tv
  In association
  with XYZ Films
  With the participation
  of Wallimage
  (Wallonia)
  Developed in
  association with
  Fís Éireann/Screen
  Ireland, Film4
  Executive Producers
  Imogen Poots
  Jesse Eisenberg

Brunella Cocchiglia

Lorcan Finnegan

Aram Tertzakian

Maxime Cottray

Todd Brown

Nick Spicer

Gabe Scarpelli

Ryan Shoup

Thomas Gammeltoft

Christophe Hollebeke

Manuel Chiche

Violaine Barbaroux

Cast

Imogen Poots

Gemma

Jesse Eisenberg

To m

Jonathan Aris

Martin

Senan Jennings

young boy

Eanna Hardwicke

older boy

Danielle Ryan

school mom

Molly McCann

Molly

Côme Thiry

baby

Olga Wehrly

crying woman

Dolby Digital

In Colour

Distributor

Vertigo Films

Credits and Synopsis

Reviewed by Ben Nicholson

Early in his first feature film, Gallivant, Andrew

Kötting explained that he’d “been told many

times that Eden’s life expectancy wasn’t very

good”. Eden, his daughter, was born with a rare

genetic disorder called Joubert syndrome and

has gone on to defy the odds and become one

of Kötting’s frequent collaborators and muses.

Some 25 years after Gallivant, Eden, now in her

mid-thirties, is pictured in intimate close-up in

the opening moments of The Whalebone Box,

while a voiceover recalls, “The moment I saw

you I knew I could love you.” The line is the

title of Kötting’s 2010 performance/installation

collaboration with Leslie Hill and Helen Paris.

The filmmaker often works in this way, echoing,

reflecting and refracting previous work, and the

slippage feels apposite here, in a liminal film

that manages to be both earth and water, interior

and expansive, documentary and dream.

The ostensible narrative is that Kötting and

pinhole photographer Anonymous Bosch are

accompanying writer Iain Sinclair as he travels

from London to return a small whalebone box to

the beach on the Isle of Harris, where the whale

was originally washed ashore. Simultaneously,

this quest is a journey into the mind of Eden,

who narrates the film while often appearing

on screen asleep – searching her dreams for an

imagined whale and even perhaps conjuring

the notion of the whalebone box. It recalls

a line from Philip Hoare’s Leviathan or, The

Whale about an “eerie otherworld, teetering

between travelogue and science fiction, was

the birthing-ground for Melville’s monster.”

At one point, daughter and father visit the

British Museum to see the Franks Casket, a

carved Anglo-Saxon whalebone chest. An

audio commentary suggests that the casket’s

iconography is open to interpretation and that

“opportunities for multivalency are rampant”.

This could be a description of the film,

and there are various moments when the

The Whalebone Box

United Kingdom 2019

Director: Andrew Kötting

Certificate 12A 89m 19s