草原云雀

Lesbian prop-master Casey (Cam Killion) is abandoned by her girlfriend after a fight at a run-down motel, at the height of COVID-19 lockdowns in California. What’s worse, her girlfriend has taken not only her car, but her dog as well. She teams up with unemployed actor Alan (Joohun Lee) on a road trip to an audition in Canada. Casey is bitterly cynical while Alan is blindingly optimistic, which makes for a hilarious odd-couple road movie. Featuring beautifully shot landscapes, Laramie Dennis’s laidback debut feature film draws on, and queers, the work of Sam Shepard, and will delight fans of offbeat indie comedies à la the ‘90s works of Hal Hartley and Alison Anders.

The film opens in a bleak police station where celebrated war correspondent Kate Rafter (Seagrove) faces questions from a psychiatrist, Dr Shaw (Kurylenko), as they work through the painful events of Rafter’s life. A horrific incident in war-torn Iraq and the death of her mother (Steed) have brought a haunted Rafter home to Herne Bay, a place she believed she had escaped forever. Her resentful sister (Friel) has not made her sister welcome and her forbearing husband Paul (Miles) fails to broker peace. Whilst packing up her mother’s belongings from her childhood home, Rafter comes to believe there is something strange and terrifying happening in the house next door.