By Elaine Hegwood Bowen
Since many people get their “film fix” in many different ways, including going to the theater, on Hulu, Amazon, Netflix or some other streaming website, from time to time, I will review a film that is not necessarily screening in mainstream theaters but accessible on some other platform.
Film Movement, the distributor of award-winning independent and foreign films, has recently released “Second Coming,” the feature film debut of British playwright Debra Tucker Green, starring Idris Elba and Nadine Marshall as a modern-day London couple who find themselves in the middle of a miracle.
It’s available on DVD and VOD, as well as a digital purchase and rental. The award-winning film was an official selection at the Toronto International Film Festival, the Rotterdam International Film Festival and the London and Stockholm Film Festivals. It had its U.S. premiere late last year at the prestigious Mill Valley Film Festival in California.
“Second Coming” follows Jax and Mark (Marshall and Elba), a middle-class couple who, along with their 11-year-old son Jerome (Kai Francis Lewis), must grapple with a unique situation. Jax has just learned that she is pregnant, but she hasn’t been with anyone for a long time, including her husband. She confides in her co-workers, but takes a while before she tells Mark, a railway worker. When she finally breaks the news, Mark, a decent but controlling man, does not take it well, and the family must find a way to recover from the aftermath.
This movie was moving kind of slow for me, but I suppose the wife needed to take her time, as she sorted out the news of her upcoming pregnancy. From what I can gather, it seems that she had miscarried a few times before, so she wasn’t too enthused about telling her husband. That, coupled with the fact that the couple hadn’t really and don’t presently show much affection for one another, creates obvious “knife-cutting” tension.
“Second Coming” is a faith-based domestic drama of quietly epic proportions, with the wife’s mysterious condition becoming an incredibly painful test of her marriage to Mark. The wife’s mental state slowly disintegrates in front of us, and Mark’s anger becomes more obvious. Meanwhile, the young boy in this film is caught in the middle, as he seeks direction from the mother whom he loves dearly, while trying to also please his father.
One case in point: the son finds a bird that needs rescuing, and Jax is livid against him having anything to do with the bird. On the other hand, Mark is ecstatic that the son has found something else to take up his time, other than gaming and videos.
This first film for playwright Tucker Green has been described as a “family drama shaded with mystery and driven by confident, searching writing, with Elba and Marshall as an exceptional lead couple.”
I love Idris Elba, and Film Movement films always keep the viewer thinking. For information about purchasing “Second Coming,” visit http://www.filmmovement.com/filmcatalog/index.asp?MerchandiseID=452. For information about downloading this film for viewing, visit http://www.imdb.com/title/- tt2837296/.
