Black Pond

Chris Langham stars as a disheartened patriarch of a suburban family in this impressive debut from new comers Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe. Filmed for around £25,000 Black Pond explains the events which led to a middle-class British family being accused of murder, and the media interest that followed as a result. One day, Tom Thompson (Langham) suddenly befriends the disconnected eccentric Blake (Colin Hurley) who he meets on a walk in a wood. The narrative that follows is told in a series of flashbacks and mockumentry style interviews with members of the Thompson family, and their friend Tim Tanaka. Interspersed among these, are delightful animated flourishes, and youtube music-videos delivered by the Thomson daughters. It is all wonderfully edited.

The end result is a delightful indie tragicomedy full of heart, and humour that is both deeply deadpan and very dry. Understandably, the film seems to have attracted the most attention because it is Chris Langham’s first work since serving a jail sentence for downloading child pornography. His own personal battles should not detract from what is a brilliant performance, and indeed the film itself, regardless of whether the filmmakers intended it or not,  seems to parallel Langham’s fall from grace. At one point, Tom Thompson states to the camera: “I lost my job because of the publicity”.

Perhaps one of Black Pond’s greater successes is the film’s ability to treat well-worn subject matter, suburban disenchantment, with ever witty panache. Tom Thompson used to have fantastic adventures in his sleep, but now dreams of broadband and ham sandwiches. He admits that he has a tedious life, but at least he has a nice swimming pool in the summer. His wife, Sophie Thomson (Amanda Hadingue), used to write poetry, though she now calls them suicide letters, and has no hesitation in declaiming John Clay’s verse to strangers. Their marriage has disintegrated to the point where the only conversations they have are arguments about whether bananas are a suitable night-time snack or not. Their daughters Katie (Anna O’Grady) and Jess (Helen Cripps) are less fleshed out characters, though their shy and introverted flatmate, Tim, is amusingly executed by Sharpe. I get the impression (and I hope it’s true) that there was a significant amount of improvisation in the scenes he shared with Simon Amstell, who plays a bizarre and fraudulent psychologist.

In its haunting surrealism,  melancholy, and deadpan comedy, Black Pond reminded me of Chris Morris’ television series, Jam. Also, the lines delivered by Blake, which are so eccentrically British, recalled the animations of David Firth, whose most famous for the Salad Fingers series. There is no way of knowing whether Kingsley and Sharpe were familiar of Firth’s work, but they are certainly the right age to be at least aware of it. Maybe the similarity is coincidental. All in all, Black Pond is an impressive debut, that will make you laugh, might even make you cry, and with its modest 80-minute length, definitely deserves your time.