Crushed
An Englishman abroad in Bangkok, Father Daniel has made the best of his life, he and his Thai wife May doting on their daughter Olivia, she in turn taking care of her new kitten, Missy, while Daniel loves them both, but not so much as he loves God, his faith unshakeable even when a sleepover leaves Olivia ten-year-old distraught after a cruel prank played by her friend’s older brother.
Claiming it was a video he found on the internet, that he was “just messing around” showing them the young woman clad only in red lingerie who plays with a kitten before placing it beneath the heel of her boot and applying pressure, Father Daniel offers comfort and guidance to the boy, but when Missy escapes through an open door and Olivia sets off to find her and also vanishes, Bible lessons alone cannot return a lost child.
Crushed written and directed by Fashionista’s Simon Rumley, a man most often shifty and sinister, conniving and creepy or just plain odd as in Sightseers, A Dark Song or In Fabric, Steve Oram is cast against type as Father Daniel, unquestioning in the devotion which defines him, speaking to Olivia (Margaux Dietrich) when she asks him about life and death and cruelty as though she were a member of his congregation rather than his daughter.
Offering the homilies and platitudes of the official position of the church, he is of no more use to the terrified May (Nattapohn Rawddon), telling her that if they believe then God will reward them for not breaking faith, a blind conceit which extends even to his conversations with the student who may have been the last person to see Olivia, making gentle moral appeals to his good nature while compartmentalising the possibility that she may already be dead.
Fortunately, though it is a small blessing, she is not, held in a cage by the very man who made the video which so upset her, Richard Stanley (Christian Ferreira) a South African immigrant desperate for money to fund his way home who caught her breaking into his studio, compounding previous bad decisions by offering her on the dark web, obscene American tourist Mister Jeffreys (Jonathan Samson) willing to pay for “the little princess.”
With the camera observing rather than judging, Crushed is an emotive film even as it sits at a remove, Father Daniel a man caged by belief even as the animals in the market are caged by the actions of the others, all the creatures great and small made by his Good Lord and deserving better, a man who despite his naivety knows that he is becoming compromised as Old Testament attitudes towards justice begin to assert themselves, forced to take action when the hoped-for divine intercession doesn’t materialise.
The Edinburgh International Film Festival continues until Wednesday 20th August
