Debbie Tucker Green (director)
BFI (studio)
15 (certificate)
105 mins (length)
05 June 2015 (released)
03 June 2015
Second Coming is the first feature film from the playwright Debbie Tucker Green. Her approach to chronicling the dramas of a middle-class London family could very easily be described as intimate, although I would suggest this would be somewhat glib, as it wouldn’t begin to convey the sense of intensity and claustrophobia achieved at certain points in the film.
Nadine Marshall carries the film as the matriarch who tortures herself over how to respond to a pregnancy which is seemingly inexplicable due to her lack of intimacy with her husband, played by Idris Elba. Elba dominates the screen as the father, yet convinces as a man somewhat crumpled and resigned by the pressures of everyday life and familial conflict. It is refreshing to see a star like Elba acting opposite an age-appropriate partner, it is also refreshing to see him play a Londoner after so many notable performances as Americans during his career.
As is often the case with filmmakers who have made the transition from theatre, there is an aesthetic and structural debt to that art form. Long scenes tend to play out in single rooms with large amounts of dialogue, and a heavy focus on the handful of major characters. There are some people who will tell you this isn’t cinematic, but I’ve never had a problem with such films. In this case there are lots of long scenes with lots of dialogue but Tucker Green’s use of the camera is interesting and assured and the film is gripping from start to finish.
Some critical aspects of the plot are never made explicitly clear but they don’t need to be. It is a film about family and faith, and it is a film completely deserving of those themes. Attempting to tackle such issues in a contemporary setting could have seemed trite, portentous or evangelising if put together by a less talented storyteller but in this instance the result is incredibly powerful and affecting. Some of the symbolism becomes a little heavy handed towards the end but by this point I was completely willing to go with it.