EIFF 2012: Exit Elena

This highly accomplished, micro-budget drama from Nathan Silver offers a rich study of loneliness and its different effects. Newly qualified nurse Elena (Kia Davis, also taking story and editing credits) is hired by fastidious, overbearing matriarch Cindy to look after her ailing mother-in-law. Immediately displaying little regard for appropriate professional interaction, Cindy sees Elena as “part of the family,” forcing parental advice and the airing of her and husband Jim’s dirty laundry on the carer. Initially circumspect, Elena is increasingly drawn to her surrogate clan.

The tragedy of the piece is expertly twinned with awkward humour as the two women’s relationship develops over just a couple of weeks, with Silver’s low-fi approach producing an eerie voyeurism as explanation for the characters’ behaviour is slowly trickled-down via seemingly incidental interaction. Beautifully structured, well performed and as unsettling as it is funny, Exit Elena is a complex work of real insight and heft evocative of Cassavetes. One to catch while you can. [Chris Fyvie]