Leeds International Film Festival 2024 – Matt And Mara ★★★★

Released: TBC

Director: Kazik Radwanski

Starring: Deragh Campbell, Matt Johnson

Kazik Radwanski has a small but devoted fanbase obsessed with the minute details of his naturalist filmmaking style seen in previous feature, Anne at 13,000ft, brought to the screen once again in the delightfully short new feature Matt and Mara. Constantly balancing on the edge of a line between awkwardness and humour, our two main characters (played by Matt Johnson and Deragh Campbell respectively) embody the strange overlap between cautiousness and impulsivity: an extremely modern phenomenon.

The film takes a close look at Mara’s individuality and how she feels not just connected to Matt after an apparent hiatus in their short-term relationship, but also indebted to him. Campbell does a stellar job at communicating the lack of self-assuredness that her counterpart so effortlessly possesses; creating a palpable, discomforting tension between them at times.

In the first two minutes alone, we see this tension plastered on Mara’s face as Matt shows up at her classroom, just as she’s about to let her students in. Campbell’s horror and clear anxiety comically juxtaposes Johnson’s rugged, bashful excitement and suggests a disconnect between the two. In classically subtle Radwanski style however, Matt enters the classroom anyway, clambering over desks; to which we see a flicker of a smile on Mara’s face.

Matt and Mara felt to me more like a window into Mara’s life, than Matt’s. With a husband and child of her own, the former of which she seems worryingly disconnected from at points, Mara is presented as a woman of great confliction and poor tact. She navigates social situations with a fumbling awkwardness that’s endearing at best and annoying at worst. The constant toss-up between likeable and unlikable for the viewer brings a refreshing honesty to Radwanski’s tale and is an ode to the beauty that lies in nothing but normality.

It’s normal to feel ups and downs like Mara does in her marriage, it’s normal to feel attacked when your opinion on something as simple and materialistic as music is discouraged by others, and it’s normal to feel a pang of ecstasy when a past lover or friend like Matt with his contagious, addictive energy pops up again.

If anything, Radwanski is a master of relatability. Through decidedly genius yet simple techniques like restless handheld camera work, clear improvisation to the point of conversational interruption or giving the city’s soundscape a mic of its own; he clearly embraces the lo-fi genre. It works for our little undefined story with an ambiguous relationship and oddly, keeps us wanting more from them and for them.

Major criticisms of the film so far have touched on its non-plot, an absence of a story: but I disagree. Between the cracks of their situation, Matt and Mara offer us a slice of life as it is, with no toppings or addons. Just them and their feelings with little to no fruition for the viewer to mull over long after the credits roll.