Mark Jenkins’ 2019 debut “Bait” was a microbudget monochrome portrait of a Cornish coastal community that reveled in its old-school, hand-processed aesthetic and proved a surprise indie hit in U.K. theaters. The firm stand against gentrification taken in its onscreen narrative, about middle-class townies crowding out longstanding local businesses, also felt indicative of Jenkins’ place in a film industry intent on adopting newer, slicker, more commercial methods. You wouldn’t have bet the house back then on him eventually making a fantastical horror movie with name actors, yet six years and two features later, here we are with “Rose of Nevada” — a film that ostensibly meets that description, though the iridescent, eerily gorgeous result betrays not a hint of compromise on Jenkins’ part.
The pivot to genre storytelling isn’t a surprise. Jenkins already went there in his 2022 sophomore feature “Enys Men,” which doubled down on “Bait’s” warmly scratchy technique (albeit this time in blazingly saturated color), but wedded it to a folk-horror tale that, for all its cryptic aloofness, felt somewhat less original than its predecessor. It was an honorable disappointment, but “Rose of Nevada” finds a happy, even thrilling medium: lithely exploring the uncanny while honestly examining a neglected corner of working-class England. It also revives “Bait’s” tender, dead-on homage to the arch, curt stylings of a previous school of British screen “realism,” with stars George MacKay and Callum Turner slipping seamlessly into that brisk, grainy, post-dubbed world.
Following festival dates in Venice and Toronto, “Rose of Nevada” can surely look forward to more extensive distribution than either of Jenkins’ previous films — in large part thanks to those leading men, both excellent while remaining completely subservient to their helmer’s brambly, unvarnished vision, and mingling perfectly with his returning character actors, among them “Bait” lead Edward Rowe and Jenkins’ partner (and story collaborator) Mary Woodvine. Matching the lightning-in-a-bottle domestic success of “Bait” might be a tall order, though either way, the film seals its one-man-band creator (who takes sole writing, directing, editing, lensing, scoring and sound design credit) as a distinctive, now eminently recognizable arthouse voice.
Fans already tuned into said voice will feel immediately at home with the new film’s introductory montage: close-up images of rust, rock and rope, so wearily weathered and palpably textured you feel you could touch the screen and come away with with damp, stained fingertips. Blooming weeds gnawing their way through paving cracks, slate roof tiles lacquered by rain, peeling front doors warped and faded by the sun to virtual driftwood: Jenkins’ camera treasures all the down-at-heel details of its locale, a fading, unnamed fishing village visited by few and left by many.
Against all odds, however, one thing has come back: the eponymous boat. A battered, clunky, unlovely vessel, as redolent of the Nevada desert as a slab of battered cod, it was declared lost at sea 30 years ago, with its crew of local fishermen believed to have been claimed by the waves. When it miraculously appears one morning in the village harbor, unmanned but intact, it augurs revived fortunes for a community fallen on hard times — notwithstanding the words “GET OFF THE BOAT NOW” ominously carved into woodwork. Young, unemployed family man Nick (MacKay) volunteers to take the boat back out, along with taciturn, new-in-town drifter Liam (Turner) and grizzled seadog Murgey (Francis Magee). The waters are full of fish, and before long the boat’s hold is too. The comforts of home await.
Or not, as it turns out. “Rose of Nevada’s” blunt reality shift is best experienced without forewarning, though it’s fair to say the film is a lo-fi time-travel journey, looping back on itself in vertiginous, head-scrambling ways, and hinging on subtle differences in mood and period. Outwardly, the men’s village doesn’t much change across decades, though differences in way of life and communal spirit are acutely felt. It’s a fitting story swerve for Jenkin’s filmmaking, which itself feels chronologically caught between the 1960s and the 2020s, and one that exposes a neat seam of tension between the two principal characters, as one yearns for the present and the other immediately adapts, unfazed, to the past.
It’s a lean tale — Jenkins’ scripts continue to waste as few words as his characters do — though a more tense, propulsive and even affecting one than “Enys Men,” which was far more concerned with sensory disquiet than anything else. Still, the richest, most enduring pleasures here are formal ones, beginning with the exacting still-life compositions and oily, vehement primary hues of Jenkins’ 16mm lensing, which can make a painterly subject of a maritime squall or a mustard-yellow wading boot. As in his previous films, a clanking, rattling soundscape constructed entirely in post is an artisanal marvel, immersing viewers both in the perilous metallic din of a maybe-sinking ship, and the comforting artifice of analog movie-making. Whatever year “Rose of Nevada” is sailing to, we remain contentedly on board.
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