Third Star has a deceptively simple plot — three lads go camping with a dying friend — but it becomes both a mad romp along the stunning Pembrokeshire coast, and a heartbreaking insight into friendship. This British film from a new, woman director screens in the prestigious closing slot at the Edinburgh International Film Festival tonight.
Whether it is three men in a boat or four men in a tent, even pleasurable expeditions involve privations that bring out the best and worst in people, often amusingly. Hattie Dalton, the director, lets her cast of four josh and jape until their English middle-class reserve cracks beneath the comedy. Just because their mate is dying, the lads see no reason not to make fun of him, combining tenderness with brutal honesty. “You look like s**t,” says one, helpfully.
There is a knockout central performance by Benedict Cumberbatch as James, a strange, ethereal creature with a will of iron, who sports a brown fedora. James is 29 years old and will not see his thirtieth birthday because of an unspecified cancer. The old friends rounded up for his last hurrah are played by the handsome trio of J. J. Feild, Adam Robertson and Tom Burke with a chemistry part-acted and partly brought about by the exigencies of the shoot — hours spent in frozen water in Barafundle Bay, in Pembrokeshire, coupled with grim food and collapsing tents. The wild Welsh landscape plays a role of its own, reflecting the men’s moods and memories, all exquisitely shot on grainy film by Dalton in her first feature — she previously won a Bafta for a short film.
This is also a first for Vaughan Sivell, the scriptwriter, who catches the Hornbyesque nuances of bloke banter, and then probes deeper. All the characters are endearing in different ways — the dark side is provided offstage by death.
James, who is high on morphine, tries to lecture his friends on their futures as they stand on the thirtysomething cusp of commitments, families and careers that he will never have. The lads fight back with spliffs, beer and humour. “It’s like going for a walk with a sick, white Oprah,” they moan. Yet as they divest themselves of emotional and physical baggage — they are the most incompetent of campers — the men struggle with an ethical dilemma, and prove themselves to be unlikely heroes. The camping trip slips into another dimension, and the surreal atmosphere is aided by looney cameos by fine actors — Hugh Bonneville as a beachcomber obsessed with toy light-sabers and Karl Johnson, a crusty old ferryman who, oddly, wears blue eyeshadow.
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Third Star dares to tackle the taboo of too-early death with great humour and warmth. It is an assured debut for Dalton — and an economical one. With a budget of only £450,000 she has made a huge, sweeping film and her next move is worth watching.
I spent much of the latter half trying not to bawl out loud. Yet the story’s ending is uplifting as well as emotionally devastating: the audience sat in stunned silence afterwards.
Third Star is released in Britain in September