It Is In Us All
SXSW Film Festival Narrative Feature Competition
Reviewed for Shockya.com by Abe Friedtanzer
Director: Antonia Campbell-Hughes
Writer: Antonia Campbell-Hughes
Cast: Cosmo Jarvis, Rhys Mannion, Claes Bang, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Lalor Roddy
Screened at: SXSW Film Festival Online, LA, 3/12/22
Opens: March 14th, 2022
Showing up at the end of something has a tendency to provoke curiosity and lead to unanswered questions. Those who don’t arrive until it’s too late may wish they had come earlier and had the opportunity to experience an event or get to know a person. After the fact, it can be difficult or even impossible to create a relationship and truly understand something or someone. Being unable to achieve fulfillment or satisfaction can be deeply troubling and lead to a person’s unraveling.
In It Is In Us All, Hamish (Cosmo Jarvis) arrives from London to the town of Donegal, Ireland following the death of an aunt he never met. Shortly after he arrives, Hamish is involved in a car accident, which results in the death of a fifteen-year-old boy named Callum. Another passenger from the other car, Evan (Rhys Mannion), approaches him and the two begin to develop a connection. Hamish also discovers an unexpected draw to his aunt’s home as local residents recall and relate memories of his mother to him.
When Hamish is first introduced, he seems distinctly uninterested in being where he is and having anyone else bother him. He has come to Ireland to deal with a loose end that must be cleaned up, and he speaks harshly to the woman working the car rental counter, as if her doing her job is bothering him. His father, heard and seen only on the other end of the phone, is even less compassionate, repeatedly insisting to his son that he get back from his errand to the business at hand, with his mother’s heritage and birthplace not worth spending time exploring when there is work to be done.
Hamish begins to experience a shift in perspective after his accident, which he cannot remember. Though he has come as a result of one death, he is forced to confront another, and though he also didn’t know his aunt, her passing at least came at a point that felt more natural than a fifteen-year-old boy tragically taken in an accident. Far from home and in a place he doesn’t know, Hamish’s exterior softens, and he is compelled to consider the type of person that he is when he is accosted by Callum’s distraught mother. Evan’s attitude is more forgiving, since he too seems lost and unsure of who he really is.
It Is In Us All features a strong lead performance from Jarvis, an actor who delivered a memorable turn in last year’s The Evening Hour. He makes Hamish a solitary character, one who is used to being in charge and in control of what’s going on around him, and the disorientation he feels after being potentially responsible for a car crash at the same time that he is in unfamiliar surroundings lowers his defenses and forces introspection. Jarvis compellingly conveys the discomfort of that subtle transformation.
Just as Hamish can never fully ascertain the nature of his mother and his aunt’s relationship years earlier and what his ties to the land are, there is just as much ambiguity in what the dynamic between Hamish and Evan represents. They are both searching for something, even if Hamish doesn’t realize that’s what he needs, while Evan sees something alluring in the visiting outsider. In her feature directorial debut, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, who also appears in the film, incorporates, in her own words, concepts of patriarchal dominance and misplaced male energy, to tell a story that is resonant and haunting, digging into how the failure to explore feelings can have truly detrimental and isolating consequences.
91 minutes
Story – B+
Acting – B+
Technical – B
Overall – B+