Film Review: The Arbor [dir: Clio Barnard; 2010]

It's the sort of idea that almost certainly would have been written off as film-making suicide by a market research focus group: make a documentary about a working class playwright who died when she was 29, but instead of showing the actual footage of the interviews you've conducted with her relatives, get a group of actors to lip-sync their words in a variety of settings. It may sound terribly overwrought, but it works. The playwright in question is Andrea Dunbar and even those not familiar with her work will find a great deal to mull over in Clio Barnard's compelling portrayal of her relatively short-life and its many ripples. Whilst raising questions about class, family, parenthood and racism, the film takes the documentary form in an intriguing direction and proves that, when placed in the right context, theatre can still be mesmerising and relevant.