FILM

UK 2011 82 mins Dir: Tom Kingsley & Will Sharpe Starring: Chris Langham, Anna O'Grady, Simon Amstell, Will Sharpe, Helen Cripps, Amanda Hadingue, Colin Hurley

We get one of these every couple of years: a hugely imaginative, ultra-low-budget Britflick of the variety that no funding body would touch with the proverbial bargepole. In fairness to the cash-distributing suits, 'Black Pond' does seem rather unpromising on paper. Co-directed by a twentysomething bloke who used to be in 'Casualty', it stars his mate, an annoying comedian (Simon Amstell), and an actor who must by law be described as "disgraced" after being jailed for downloading child pornography. Amstell's presence remains problematic, but Chris Langham is quite brilliant as a tactless fiftysomething middle-class man stuck in a moribund marriage, who invites a 'care in the community type' into the family home on a whim. If you need a reference point, file 'Black Pond' next to Nick Whitfield's pleasingly odd 'Skeletons'.

Mock-doc inserts establish that the Thompson family have been vilified by the tabloids after a man died at their dinner table. Flashbacks reveal the events leading up to this bizarre incident. Tom Thompson (Langham) encounters the troubled and intense Blake (Hurley) while walking his three-legged dog near a local pond. Back at the family home, Blake becomes a catalyst for Tom and his sour spouse, thwarted poet Sophie (Hadingue), to have their first proper conversation in years. Meanwhile, the empty nesters' daughters (Cripps, O'Grady) are living with their peculiar platonic pal Tim (co-director Sharpe), who's in therapy with a bogus psychoanalyst (Amstell).

Although Amstell threatens to unbalance the whole thing and the soundtrack boasts some particularly egregious examples of the loathsome quirky-weedy-indie genre, the performances by Langham and Hadingue anchor this shaggy three-legged dog story in real sadness and melancholy. It's also blackly funny: witness Tom's priceless banana outburst. (Robin Askew)

Website www.blackpondfilm.com/

Opens: January 30