This is the kind of thriller that clamps down on you like a cinematic thumbscrew and gradually cinches tighter and tighter until you’re leſt mildly asphyxiated and strangely wiser.
Former Eritrean child soldier turned high school prodigy Luce Edgar comes under fire when his history teacher launches a vendetta against him following the submission of his paper on the merits of violence as a cleansing force. As our eponymous lead (the bedazzling Kelvin Harrison Jr.) pits himself against Prof Harriet Wilson (the sensational Octavia Spencer), the intricacies of entrenched bigotries and race-relations bubble to the fore, cranking up the heat one degree at a time until you’re leſt stunned and seared, like a frog in boiling water.
Tim Roth and Naomi Watts (reunited once more, despite the gory ending to their last on- screen marriage in Funny Games) brilliantly play Luce’s adoptive parents who suffer from reality shock as their perfect little nuclear family comes tumbling down around them.
Fact Luce means 'light' in Italian. A luce is also a type of pike fish. Pike fish are notorious for being voracious and for having large pointed teeth.
Cue the melodrama, psychodrama, sociodrama and just plain ol’ drama in this superbly claustrophobic political horror that puts you in mind of what would happen if Jordan Peele and Sofia Coppola got together and birthed a creative lovechild.
22 / OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2019 /
OUTLINEONLINE.CO.UK
With more twists than a U-bend convention and enough red herrings to start a very niche fish market, prepare to be treated to a script that is so far ahead of you that Luce won’t so much be taking you along for the ride, as dragging you along screaming, clinging frantically to the tow bar.
It’s rare when you get a film that manages to cram an entire world within the confines of its opening and end credit sequences, and rarer still when it actually gets away with it. Julius Onah’s masterpiece is the later – jammed with wit sharper than a letter opener on Ritalin and emotional performances that pulse like shockwaves through the feature in time to its bouncy, yet darkly brooding soundtrack.
Bit by bit Luce pulls back the layers, accompanied by all the sick satisfaction of a plaster peeled from a wound and the same morbid curiosity that accompanies poking the newly formed scab beneath - you just won’t be able to look away.
Words Julius Onah
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