DVD Review – Electricity (2014)

Electricity follows Lily (Agyness Deyn), a young Lancashire woman who has to deal with her mother’s death. When her mother’s house is sold, Lily believes that despite falling out of , her younger brother Mikey (Christian Cooke) deserves a share of the money. Lily takes it upon herself to travel to London and find Mikey, a huge step considering she is prone to regular epileptic seizures and is leaving the safety of home.

Agyness Deyn does wonderfully as Lily. She’s tough with tons of inner strength, but manages to be completely vulnerable at the same time. It’s a really impressive performance. Electricity draws you into Lily’s world very cleverly. Her seizures are represented as huge hallucinogenic lightshows which manage to be both beautiful and terrifying. The film was made with input from epilepsy groups and apparently some of the stuff shown in Electricity is pretty authentic. The whole film is very well shot and has some lovely vistas and striking images. It’s all very slick.

Despite both Deyn and the presentation being the biz, there was something just stopping me from getting completely immersed in everything. It’s very much a low-budget Brit grot flick, which is fine, but I got the feeling it wasn’t doing much to step outside of that. These kinds of films are always depressing, gritty affairs when there’s no rule saying they should all look and play out the same. Budgetary concerns affect what you can do in a film, but it can’t put too much of a dampener on creativity. I nearly always have a problem with coincidence being the main driving force behind the hero/heroine’s quest. Lily’s journey to find Mikey is littered with good fortune and happy coincidence. An argument could be made for the film being more of a fairytale as we spend a lot of time in Lily’s head. We experience her seizures first hand and are not privy to any information or happenings whilst she’s recovering. She wanders around in a dreamlike state and this could be more of an allegory than a down-the-line portrayal of real life. What damages that argument for me is the dialogue and the way characters bounce off each other. It speaks more of simpler writing than something playing above peoples’ heads. It’s not bad, just a bit functional.

Electricity is an interesting one. It’s a well acted piece that gave me even more respect for people dealing with epilepsy and the like. It doesn’t do too much to differentiate itself from the slew of other Britgrit films, but the central idea and Deyn’s performance make it worth the time. Recommended.

[rating=3]
Ben Browne

Genre: Drama Distributor: Soda Pictures DVD Release Date: 6th April 2015 (UK) Rating: 15 Director: Bryn Higgins Cast:Agyness Deyn, Christian Cooke, Lenora Crichlow, Paul Anderson Buy:Electricity [DVD] [2015]