Rent Bait (2019)
3.2 of 5 from 864 ratings
1h 29min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Modern-day Cornish fisherman Martin (Edward Rowe) is struggling to buy a boat while coping with family rivalry and the influx of London money, Airbnb and stag parties to his harbour village. The summer season brings simmering tensions between the locals and newcomers to boiling point, with tragic consequences.
- Actors:
- Edward Rowe, Mary Woodvine, Simon Shepherd, Giles King, Chloe Endean, Isaac Woodvine, Georgia Ellery, Jowan Jacobs, Stacey Guthrie, Tristan Sturrock, Martin Ellis, Morgan Val Baker, Janet Thirlaway
- Directors:
- Mark Jenkin
- Others:
- Kate Byers, Linn Waite
- Studio:
- BFI Video
- Genres:
- Drama
- Collections:
- 10 Films to Watch If You Like: Jonathan Livingston Seagull, 2020, CinemaParadiso.co.uk Through Time
- Awards:
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 20/01/2020
- Run Time:
- 89 minutes
- Languages:
- English LPCM Stereo
- Subtitles:
- English Hard of Hearing
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Full Screen 1.33:1 / 4:3
- Colour:
- B & W
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Feature-length audio commentary with director Mark Jenkin and film critic Mark Kermode
- Bait Q&A with Mark Jenkin (2019, 33 mins): filmmaker Mark Jenkin in conversation with Mark Kermode, recorded at BFI Southbank
- Dear Marianne (2015, 6 mins): a Cornishman's travels in Ireland, through Wexford, Waterford and Cork in search of the familiar in this short film by Mark Jenkin
- The Essential Cornishman (2015, 6 mins): Mark Jenkin's film is an homage to the spontaneous prose of The Beats, from the mythical Cornish west
- The Road to Zennor (2016, 2 mins): poetic travelogue by Mark Jenkin of a familiar journey to the small coastal village near St Ives
- The Saving of Bill Blewitt(1936, 25 mins): a charming docu-drama that sees two Cornish fishermen managing to save enough money to replace their boat after it's lost at sea
- Scenes in the Cornish Riviera (C1912,19 mins): providing an early visual record of Cornwall, this Great Western Railway-sponsored tour visits, among others, Saltash, Newquay, Truro, Falmouth and St Ives
- Trailers
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Reviews (33) of Bait
A Quiet Classic - Bait review by PD
This highly original film from independent writer-director Mark Jenkin is a powerful and at times surreal study of fear and loathing in a Cornish fishing village, the dominant mood being, aka Bad Day at Black Rock, suspicion, outrage and doom. Shot in Cornwall, its microbudget production was partly crewed by staff and students from the film school at Falmouth University, where Jenkin is an associate lecturer.
Bait is grounded in simple, archetypal themes of tradition versus modernity, poor natives against rich invaders. Based on the various tensions between locals and tourists in a once-thriving fishing village, it’s an evocative portrait of culture clashes in an area where traditional trades and lifestyles are under threat. The surface plot has the stark feel of classic neorealism, being shot with a vintage Bolex cine-camera on black-and-white 16mm film, the director hand-processing his footage to give it a scratchy, antique feel, whilst all dialogue and sound effects were overdubbed afterwards.
Local Cornish comedian Edward Rowe is very watchable as the film's brooding anti-hero Martin Ward, a fisherman who has fallen on hard times, and who largely blames the big-city tourists who have colonised his once-thriving coastal village with vacation homes that remain empty most of the year. This conflict is personal for Martin, having been forced to sell the harbourside cottage where he was raised to a wealthy London couple, Sandra and Tom Leigh (excellently played by Mary Woodvine and Simon Shepherd), who have converted it into what they consider to be a charming holiday retreat but, having gutted the place and redecorated it in a twee ‘fisherfolk’ style with nets and maritime memorabilia on the walls, have of course effectively ripped out its soul in the process - as Martin growls: “Ropes and chains like a sex dungeon.”
As he scrapes a meagre living from the seafood that he nets along the rocky coastline at dawn every day, Martin dreams of buying his own boat and going back to full-time fishing. But suppressed anger is slowly eating him alive, and a minor dispute with the Leighs over parking his battered truck outside their cottage soon escalates into a full-scale class war, and the Pinteresque pressure-cooker mix of suspicion and resentment eventually boils over into confrontation, retribution and lethal violence.
Jenkin is perhaps guilty of exaggerating the locals’ resistance to change for contrived effect, but most of the film is sophisticated and intelligent, depicting a symbolic battle that resonates in a post-austerity Britain where the gulf between rich and poor only seems to get worse. And the Cornish landscape is deliberately and successfully desentimentalised, the director effectively turning it into an anti-picture postcard – I loved the raw, slightly depressed feel of the landscape, far more in keeping with mining traditions & fishing villages in Cornwall than current Rock / Padstow & Poldark associations. Yet at the same time everything – a pint of beer, lapping waves, brooding faces – is captured with an infectious love of tactile detail, and it is this that perhaps elevates the film into the quiet classic for which it should be recognised.
15 out of 20 members found this review helpful.
Is the scratchy overlay necessary? - Bait review by TE
Good reviews on here by PD and jb, so I won't go into the narrative or characterisation.
I think it's worth asking a question about the contrived b/w, with the deliberately 'distressed' flickering and scratching. Does it add to the film's impact, or is it something of a gimmick?
I incline towards the latter.
It's a good enough story and theme without the need for such a retro presentation. A b/w film without the effects would have been even more interesting.
One of the technical strengths is the use of close-up, both of faces and of the details of work on fishing gear.
7 out of 14 members found this review helpful.
Absolutely awful - Bait review by CP Customer
This is very stylised and looks like something a media student would have made. I couldn't get past the first ten minutes. It was quite frankly unwatchable.
4 out of 6 members found this review helpful.