Film: The Incomer

I'd never have come across this film if it hadn't been for the stranger I chatted to in the third row at the Roger Taylor gig. Remarkably, they had seen only two films in the last decade, both in the last month, and this was one of them. Even more so, it is being screened in mainstream cinemas.

It is a comedy with three main characters. A brother and sister, (Grant O'Rourke and Gayle Rankin) brought up on the remotest of Scottish islands, from which their parents have long departed. Approaching middle age, they are determined to live out their lives here, even though they are incredibly lonely and desperate for other human contact. They won’t admit this to each other.

The third is the council worker (Domhnall Gleeson), who, rather inexplicably, has been sent on his own not knowing what he will find. That would only happen in a comedy or a horror film.

The Incomer is the starkest way of showing how people who choose to live their lives very differently can still find something in common. It is hilarious in many parts, particularly the huge mickey-taking of how ambitious council workers care not one jot about the people they are serving and only their own jobs. (I work in this arena and see this every single day)

A superb film and another where the Scottish scenery shines. But that's never hard.

7½/10