Winner, Best Film, Turin Film Festival
‘Shell like the petrol station?’ asks a man of the eponymous heroine of Scott Graham’s debut feature. ‘Shell like the beautiful thing you get in the sea,’ the affection-starved 17-year-old replies.
Manning a practically disused service station in the remotest highlands of Scotland, Shell lives with only her broken-down mechanic father Pete (Joseph Mawle) for company. All is clearly not right in Shell’s world, but she’s intrinsically a bright soul who has an effect on everyone she encounters. Pete, meanwhile, is taciturn, damaged, an epileptic who is terrified of physical warmth, perhaps for good reason. This leaves Shell alone to deal with the attentions of local loners (Graham again draws strong performances from Michael Smiley and young Iain de Caestecker) when all she really wants is her dad.
Graham’s shorts – Shell, and in particular Native Son – have provided a strong sense of where this young director’s preoccupations lie. As a feature debut, Shell fulfils these expectations while holding out the promise of more to come. Right from the opening moments, where he plays with proportions and perspective from the window of a truck, Graham has his say in Shell and he should find viewers who are eager to listen.
Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International
