DUBAI: In “Night Always Comes,” British director Benjamin Caron and British star (and producer) Vanessa Kirby attempt a gritty look at the lengths to which the ever-increasing wealth gap in the US can force those on the wrong side of the gap to go. Part-suspense thriller, part-social-realist diatribe, the film (written by Sarah Conradt) seems fueled by genuine anger and good intentions. Whether that’s enough to justify you actually watching it… well, maybe.
Kirby plays Lynette, a young woman with a trouble past holding down multiple jobs (including working at a bakery and being an escort) and trying to secure the finances to ensure that her childhood home, where she lives with her nightmare narcissist mother Doreen (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and her older brother Kenny (Zack Gottsagen), who has Down syndrome. As the film begins, she has 24 hours to get the required down payment of $25,000 to the landlord — cash that she believes she and her mother have squirreled away. Then Doreen turns up in a new car. Guess how much it cost? Yep. As a spur to get the plot moving, this works. But it’s an act so malicious that it undermines the film’s later attempts to explore the mother-daughter relationship in a more-balanced way and to suggest that Doreen isn’t all bad.
