The ‘alt-right’ actor turns in an capable performance in this somewhat oddball family reunion drama
There’s no point in a fictional family reunion where long-buried resentments don’t painfully but cathartically resurface – and maybe no point in such a family reunion in real life, either. Dictynna Hood’s flawed, interesting low-budget indie is a vehemently performed, slightly Shakespearean drama, set over a few days in a Dartmoor farmhouse – the title appears to be about the area’s standing stones, though there are reminiscences of a shivery childhood visit to Stonehenge.
Here, ageing matriarch and former hippy Marianne (Anna Calder-Marshall) and her testy husband Richard (Oliver Cotton) have summoned the extended clan for Marianne’s birthday because she is very ill, and possibly even dying. (“Here’s to the remission of sins and cancer!” runs one toast over the fractious dinner.)