Glasgow Film Festival 2023: ‘Great Yarmouth’ Review
Stars: Beatriz Batarda, Nuno Lopes, Kris Hitchen | Written by Marco Martins, Ricardo Adolfo | Directed by Marco Martins
Three months before Brexit, hundreds of migrant workers arrive at the UK seaside town of Great Yarmouth looking for work. Many of them end up in local turkey processing plants, with Tânia (Beatriz Batarda) now overseeing many of their daily work routines. Married to callous hotel owner Richard (Kris Hitchen) while having a love affair with fellow migrant Carlos (Nuno Lopes), Tânia dreams of turning her husband’s abandoned hotel lots into a luxury retirement home for the elderly.
When we think of the British seaside, we think of staple motif imagery — slurping a 99 Mr Whippy on a pebble-ridden coast, giving yourself whiplash on the pier’s inevitable wooden rollercoaster, and spending so much time in the amusement arcade that you end up losing your parents. In Marco Martins’ latest feature Great Yarmouth, the grim truth couldn’t be further from our rose-tinted visions. Set against a backdrop of grey skies, council houses and turkey processing plants, Tânia lives in the heinous reality of immigrant workers rather than the narrative outside eyes choose to believe. Just as grotesque as it is bleak, the film is an assault on the sense, leaving an overall emotional feeling of bewilderment.
When Great Yarmouth is dissected, it essentially taps into every facet of what makes a “Broken Britain.” A multitude of cash payouts away from anything resembling a healthier life, Tânia is subject to emotional and mental torment in her personal and professional lives, borderline sexual harassment, and is continually dealt the terrible hand that the UK is reluctant to give her. So much bleakness on bleakness does mean that the film can sometimes stagnate, marinading in its own sense of sadness without any means of escape. If viewers are looking for some kind of social redemption or segue into a storyline that ends on a high note, they won’t find it here.
While the cultural implications are tough enough as it is, the visual bloodshed puts Great Yarmouth on par with some of the biggest horror titles in the game. It’s essentially a poultry body horror at Cronenbergian levels, chronicling the death and decapitation of Yarmouth’s turkeys in horrifyingly intense detail. Between Tânia’s personal journey and the visceral brutality that’s enough to turn the hardest of carnivores vegetarian, the film’s overall impression is almost too horrific to try and keep in the mind’s eye.
Though fantastic in message and transparency concerning the state of the UK, Great Yarmouth is perhaps it’s own worst enemy when it comes to its tone. Whether it’s the muted cinematography or oppressive energy of the propelling drama, there’s absolutely no let up in the film’s mind-numbing bleakness.
*** 3/5
Great Yarmouth screened as part of this year’s Glasgow Film Festival.
