Edinburgh Festival `99: Film Review 'The War Zone'

The War Zone

Filmhouse, tonight and Sunday

LAST YEAR the screen actor Gary Oldman made his directorial debut with Nil By Mouth. This year it's the turn of Tim Roth, with .

Adapted from the novel by Alexander Stuart, this quietly horrifying domestic drama sees spotty, 15-year-old Tom (Freddie Cuncliffe) discovering his father's incestuous relationship with his older sister Jessie (Lara Belmont).

Tom is already alienated by a move to rural Devon, and now his secret makes him a complete outsider. Hiding out in a mental bunker, he waits and watches, wondering when to lob his grenade and explode the game of Happy Families that is being played.

Like Nil By Mouth, is an unflinching portrait of family dysfunction, but Roth favours a more restrained approach to his sensational material, contrasting the deep psychological undercurrents of his drama with a stark, almost austere visual style. Classically structured, elegantly composed and shot in long, leisurely takes Roth's subtle exploration of abuse is frank without being exploitative and features some of the best acting you will see all year. After playing an alcoholic wife-batterer in Nil By Mouth, Winstone once again gives his monster a human face.