The movie is called \u201cHeel\u201d and its frenetic opening \u2014 a flash-cut glimpse of young, handsome, swaggeringly cruel Tommy (Anson Boon) in drug-fueled party mode \u2014 seems enough to explain the title. The next time we see him, though, he\u2019s neck-shackled in the basement of a remote English estate. What follows in Polish filmmaker Jan Komasa\u2019s blackly comic, unnerving thriller is clearly meant to evoke \u201cHeel\u2019s\u201d more obedience-minded reading.<\/p>\n
And who would be harshing this hooligan\u2019s buzz with a case of reform-minded abduction? An eerily isolated, rules-driven nuclear family: mild-mannered, soft-spoken Chris (Stephen Graham<\/a>), haunted Catherine (Andrea Riseborough<\/a>) and polite son Jonathan (Kit Rakusen). They all may as well have sprung from the combined neo-gothic conjurings of Edward Gorey and Harold Pinter. Under Komasa\u2019s direction, the mix of fractured fable and terroristic morality play in Bartek Bartosik\u2019s screenplay is absurd but potent, giving \u201cHeel\u201d enough psychologically twisted juju to nearly always feel like more than the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n Our first glimpse of Tommy chained up, pleading to be let go, is through the eyes of a young Macedonian refugee, Katrina (Monika Frajczyk), being given a tour of the large countryside manor where she\u2019s just been hired by Chris for twice-a-week housework. Katrina, like us, is rightly horrified but she\u2019s in her own bind: undocumented, saved by Chris from the streets, with her signature on a confidentiality agreement and a deportation threat hanging over her. She\u2019s hardly in a position to do much more than accept what\u2019s going on as a grimmer version of her own dead-end predicament.<\/p>\n And yet what\u2019s readily apparent is that this weird, fragile, insular family is genuinely keen on folding Tommy into their lives. They\u2019re also convinced of their unorthodox methods, which hinge on reinforcement and reward. Tommy seems receptive, too, with each invitation to participate in his abductors\u2019 togetherness (meals, movie nights, a picnic). This is when \u201cHeel\u201d is at its most alluringly queasy, a dark commentary on all families as institutions inherently built on confinement and emotional blackmail. (It\u2019s no coincidence one of the movie\u2019s executive producers is Jerzy Skolimowski<\/a>, who made his own pointed kidnapping allegory with \u201cMoonlighting.\u201d)<\/p>\n Everyone\u2019s broken, so the collective strength of the cast in keeping us on our toes about where this is all headed is a huge plus. The wiry Boon doles out his brash character\u2019s reserves of vulnerability to stunning effect \u2014 Tommy is a difficult part and Boon knows how to make it revealing and suspenseful. Graham\u2019s tweaked, sensitive patriarch is tantalizingly far from the heartbreaking dad of \u201cAdolescence\u201d<\/a> and the gloriously oddball Riseborough makes the most of her faint-voiced mom\u2019s severity. Frajczyk and Rakusen are also pitch-perfect.<\/p>\n