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Brilliantly blending narrative and documentary filmmaking, The Arbor retraces the troubled life of playwright Andrea Dunbar and her daughter. David Perilli reels at a potent debut.

Clio Barnard’s feature debut The Arbor was rightly voted one of the best films of last year, scoring high in Sight & Sound’s 2010 Best Film poll.

Picking up the story of 1980s Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar (writer of the plays The Arbor and Rita, Sue and Bob Too!), this potent semi-documentary explores her life and that of her daughter Lorraine, who veered into drugs and prostitution after her mother’s death in 1990.

Lorraine’s bitter memories and the contrasting ones of her family form a scaffold with which to examine the ongoing travails of the Buttershaw Estate, a place that formed a backdrop for Andrea Dunbar’s work.

But what sets this film apart is its use of lip-synched interviews. Real-life testimonies emerge with a haunting level of disconnection, at once real yet artificial as the voices eerily don’t quite fit. So Dunbar’s daughters can describe a bedroom fire while the actresses mouthing their words actually sit in front of one.

While frequently painful to watch, raw truths rarely collide with filmmaking technique this well. Also, watch out for George Costigan from Rita, Sue and Bob Too in a canny bit of casting.

 

David Perilli on 19th January 2011
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