Cert 15
95 mins
BBFC advice: Contains strong violence, threat, sexual violence
While watching The Keeping Room it struck me that hardly any war films are made from the perspective of women.
As recently as the Second World War it was common for men to disappear for years into battle in the likelihood that they would not return.
This left women to survive alone or bring up families with no support and often without a decent income.
Their plight would have been exacerbated if they had been living within a war zone as is the case with the women in Daniel Barber's The Keeping Room.
Here, sisters, Augusta and Louise (Brit Marling and Hailee Steinfeld) are left to defend their isolated home alongside their servant (Muna Otaru).
This means they are exposed to potential attack from those whose consciences have been eroded by the savagery of war.
These include two Yankee soldiers (Sam Worthington and Kyle Soller) whose brutality is clear from the opening scenes in which they murder a white woman and two slaves and burn the wagon which has been carrying them.
Gradually, the film leads to the inevitable confrontation between the men and the three feisty but frightened women who need all of their resolve to see them off.
The Keeping Room is an uncompromising movie. There is no room for sentiment in war and it does not offer much.
Worthington makes an unexpectedly adept villain but the film is really about the emotional fall-out on the three women.
Marling's character is the toughest with Steinfeld's more of a 'girly girl', In the midst of their life-or-dearth struggle is the relationship with what was once their slave and is now their sister-in-arms.
The latter is played defiantly by the excellent Otaru.
There is much to recommend The Keeping Room, particularly from a feminist perspective, but it needed more depth to its characters. I didn't feel as if I knew them well enough to care about their fate.
But it gives an unusual angle on war and I hope it has begun a trend,
Reasons to watch: unusual female perspective on the American civil war
Reasons to avoid: its characters lacks depth
Laughs: none
Jumps: two
Vomit: none
Nudity: very briefly
Overall rating: 7/10
Star tweet
Julia Hart The genius, the astonishing, the beautiful @munaotaru don't miss her performance in #TheKeepingRoom
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