Shell

"Pete" (Joseph Mawle) owns a remote petrol station in the Scottish Highlands which he runs with his teenage daughter "Shell" (Chloe Pirrie). Now some may find their location beautiful, but living there with the wind constantly howling and the only conversation coming from the occassional truck driver, regular "Hugh" (Michael Smiley) and mechanic "Adam" (Iain De Caestecker) isn't exactly rewarding for either of them. It's quite clear that he has emotional issues of his own, and that both "Hugh" and "Adam" would like to take their friendship with "Shell" a little farther - but she offers them little by way of engagement and seems as immersed in her own isolation as their home is by their bleak surroundings. Is this mundanity set in stone or might she somehow break free from this windswept torpor? This has been adapted from a short story and sadly I felt that might not quite have worked. Pirrie's performance is fine; she confidently exudes a diffident loneliness contrasting with her own feintly disguised desire for change, and there is something uncomfortably incenstuous, almost, about her delicately portrayed relationship with her psychologically ailing dad, but once that scenario is laid out, the story advances at an almost glacial pace towards a conclusion that I thought to be fairly predictable and unrewarding. Not that I was expecting any happy endings, but the absence of any real character building and the monosyllabic dialogue left me feeling a little prurient as I observed her misery - best epitomised by one scene of intimacy that summed up the passionless nature of her existence, rather than life, in a truly sterile fashion. It is worth a look for ninety minutes, but I found it all a little underwhelming.