We first meet Lyle, a married father of two, in his bright white home, washing his extremely expensive car, and eating a bland-looking English breakfast. Everything about him feels meticulously controlled, from the gleaming surfaces to the way he moves through the space, as if performing normality rather than living it.
“My experience of Britain, really, is that everything is quite repressed. It’s a repressed existence, particularly outside of London. Things do feel quite muted, the palette, the atmosphere, the emotional landscape even,” says Karia. “He’s curated this kind of lifestyle, which is quite clinical and kind of wipe clean.”
The film lingers in these spaces, letting the silence stretch just long enough to become uncomfortable. It invites the viewer to notice what isn’t being said.
“I have begun to see my country change over the years, and to slowly lose its sense of identity, its confidence, its pride,” Lyle says in a subdued voiceover. “And I’m afraid a lot of that comes down to immigration. And that’s not racism, that’s just the way it is, I’m afraid.” It almost sounds like a reasonable statement, and Lyle moves through his world with a studied calm. But every now and then, the mask cracks.
“What was interesting to me with this film is that the people purporting to be our saviours are also shit scared and vulnerable and, like, fucking deeply confused,” Karia says about the film’s genesis. “I don’t think it’s useful to look at a certain kind of political party, or figures, and make a film saying, ‘Look how nasty and awful you are’. It’s more potent to look at their vulnerabilities.”