Written for Time Out
Old-fashioned but effective, Murray Watts's two shorts are linked by a theme: loss of faith. In one, the heart abandons religion; in another, the head grows sceptical.
In the first, a recently bereaved school chaplain is grappling with doubt. He's disturbed late at night by a grieving pupil, Merry. Bright, flirtatious and 14, she sweet-talks her way into his study. In a long night, the pair find genuine solace in one another. School rules, however, entirely disapprove. As the regulations outlaw even a consolatory hug, they seem inhumane but - given the trickling undercurrent of lust here - not unfounded.
Watts has his sights on two twenty-first-century bugbears: red tape and total tolerance. Yet, despite a sprinkling of Robert Pattinson references, First Light's school is so quaint and obsolete, it could be Another Country. Ambiguity is key and Watts's own direction extracts it well. Natalie Burt is brittle and manipulative as Merry, while Andrew Harrison finds a predatory glint in the benign master.
However, Mr Darwin's Tree, a Charles Darwin biopic, feels uncomfortably tacked on to make up the double bill. Well written and piquant, it would nonetheless be more at home in the Science Museum than the back room of a pub.
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