Writer-director Jack King's directorial debut is a fascinating and beautiful social realist drama. It takes us into the lives of people we might see at car-washes in our supermarket and municipal car-parks but not really give a second thought. His film is set in a car-wash in Bradford, in the north of England, that is staffed by a hodge-podge of illegal immigrants from Central Europe and beyond. The action begins when a client accuses one of the car-washers of stealing his Rolex from his BMW. Cue lots of bigotry, not just from the client, but from within the workers, with men of all nations mistrustful of each other, not least because they don't speak the same language. The tension is greater because the men know that any police investigation is going to put a spotlight on their illegal immigrant status. And so, when the accused man (Mo’min Swaitat) shows up dead, the gang boss Zully asks Romanian migrant Cristi (Tudor Cucu Dumitrescu) and Kurdish Yusuf (Erdal Yildiz) to throw the body in the back of a white van and dump it somewhere out of sight.
The first half of the film is sparky and spot on in its depiction of contemporary Britain's diverse official and unofficial population and the thin economic thread upon which everyone's lives are built. But for me it's the quieter, more melancholy, more contemplative second half of the film that really impressed. The black and white cinematography of the bleak, oppressive Yorkshire landscape is stunning and I loved Yuma Koda's off-kilter, spare score. We get snatches of backstory and a deeper understanding of their situation. The final burial scene is one of beauty.
This really is an extraordinary, sometimes beautiful, insightful and deeply humane film.
THE CEREMONY has a running time of 92 minutes and is rated 15. It was released in the UK last August. It is available to rent on all the major streaming services.
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