Rain Catcher

Bluesky

The dark and rain-slicked streets of London provide the backdrop for this neon-infused neo noir about a voyeur who finds himself in a succession of frames. Miles (Dudley O’Shaughnessy, who some might recognise from Netflix’s Top Boy) is a clandestine photographer, who takes candid snapshots of people in the capital after dark, at times capturing them on the streets, at others using a telephoto lens to peer into apartments close to his in the high rises of the Barbican Estate.

Posting them on social media under the moniker “Rain Catcher”, he has amassed 500,000 followers but Miles still behind on his rent. We meet him as he is aiming to make a quick buck with the help of his singer girlfriend Cassie (Iris Law), who, not entirely without coercion, is acting as a honey trap for a sleazy record producer (Lorenzo Richelmy) so that Miles can take compromising photos and sell them to tabloid hack (Youssef Kerkour). But when Miles finds himself rumbled, tearing off into the night, it marks a descent into increasing paranoia.

Michele Fiascaris, writing with Filippo Polesel, smoothly scales his debut feature up from his 2018 short, which also starred O’Shaughnessy, into a stylish and twisty psychological thriller that easily goes the distance in terms of plot, even if the scripting is uneven in places. Miles is crafted with diligence as morally compromised but not without humanity. When he fears one of the women he regularly photographs in a nearby building is about to commit suicide, he tries to help. When they meet later, in a situation that requires just a smidgen of contrivance, Yumi (Jessie Mei Li) decides she likes him, despite his previous peeping Tom behaviour.

This bright development is offset by Miles making the unsettling discovery that the same woman (Kate Dickie, not for the first time turning a tiny role into something formidable) is appearing in all of his photos and may be turning her lens on him with something sinister in mind. Fiascaris generates an unsettling atmosphere, by having Miles experience repeated moments of vertigo and night terrors, complete with woozy camerawork from Evgeny Sinelnikov and an alienating electro score from Aeph. Beyond the style, however, there are some serious points being made, about the way street photography can easily become compromising and about a world in which, as one character puts it, “Controversy is worth twice as much as talent”.

Fiascaris is ambitious but shows strong control of his serpentine plot, dancing Miles towards the edge as the truth finally comes into focus.

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