Director Tom Cullen reshuffles events in an intimate drama about how the messiness of life jeopardises a new relationship
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Tom Cullen is the actor who had his breakthrough in Andrew Haigh’s contemporary romantic drama Weekend in 2011; now he makes an interesting and worthwhile debut as writer-director with Pink Wall, an intimate, scenes-from-a-relationship movie. We see various moments from various years in the time that a certain troubled couple are together, and the reshuffling of the narrative order somehow accentuates the poignant entropy as things fall apart.
Jay Duplass plays Leon, an amiable, unambitious
American guy in
London with vague plans to become a photographer, but who likes hanging out in his flat cooking, listening to
music and smoking weed, generally savouring the solo mood of directionless creativity and fun. (There’s a moment when, slightly loopy from solitude, he self-satirically calls out “Lovely balloons!” at something he’s seen out of the window and bursts out laughing. I did, too.)