Rose of Nevada ★★★1/2
- 2filmcritics
- Aug 4
- 5 min read
Availability: See end of review.
The Other “Odyssey”
Lost at sea, a sailor wants only to return to his maritime home. Across decades, he encounters distortions in time, a land both familiar and strange, and a specter-like being who seems at once more, and less, than “real.” Shot in analog format for a screen of unusual dimensions, featuring actors one recognizes, the production has the marks of the auteur: the British director, now in his 50s, also writes the script.
The 'Rose of Nevada' shows up after it was lost 30 years ago, and is taken out again.
It isn’t “The Odyssey.” It’s indie director Mark Jenkin’s “Rose of Nevada,” filmed by him in 16mm in his home county of Cornwall, England.
To the townspeople, everything seems normal. Only Liam and Nick feel the disjuncture.
The deformations of Jenkin’s third feature are a product of the sci-fi aspects of the story. Nick, a novice fisherman, and his colleague Liam, another novice fisherman, unwillingly time travel 30 years into the past, before they were born, to the same town and the same fishing community, albeit one bustling and thriving in a way they’ve never seen it. They are inexplicably treated as known (but not as themselves). In the world of 1993, Liam is Alan, an absentee husband and father, rather than the drifter that he is in the present, a man known to “sleep rough” near the docks. And instead of a struggling family man, Nick is Luke, the only son of the clinging Richards. To the townspeople, everything seems normal. Only Liam and Nick feel the disjuncture.
While a bit of a spoiler, the above description might keep you from talking to your cinema-going partner to try to figure out what’s going on. And though the confusion built into the story can be distracting, the sci-fi-lite plot has its reward: an intriguing exploration of the differing psychologies and motivations of the 2 men.
The novice fishermen Alan/Liam (Callum Turner), left, and Luke/Nick (George MacKay) take lessons in cleaning fish from the spectral captain, "Murgey" (Francis Magee).
Nick, compelling and intense and made more so by the square, claustrophobic screen, longs to be in the present with his wife and child. He’s desperate to escape from the disorienting past, questioning Murgey (sounds like “murky”), the apparitional captain of the trawler, who never leaves the boat and won’t say his real name (if he has one). Nick and Liam and the captain go out day after day on the ‘Rose of Nevada,’ experiencing everything from the bountiful catches of the past (the only source of the village’s prosperity) to the killer storm that changed everything and, in the present, haunts the town.
Tina (Rosalind Eleazar) confronts who she thinks is her absent husband and father Alan (Callum Turner), outside the bustling town pub, with their daughter in tow.
Nick resists the Richards’ attempts to embrace him as their son, resists that past. Liam, in contrast, lacking a satisfying home life, easily takes up with “his” (Alan’s) wife Tina and “their” daughter. Tina encourages Alan to live in the present, to be comfortable in 1993, and he seems opportunistically willing. “Can I tell you something?” Alan/Liam asks Tina as they snuggle on her couch. “Only if it matters,” she answers, pointedly rejecting any discussion of the future. “What’s important is that you are here.”
Never has the look and sound of vessel technology—aged cables and winches, box upon box of gutted fish on crushed ice—been so mesmerizing.
In addition to writing and directing, Jenkin was behind the camera, edited the footage, and composed the evocative score, consistent with his prior 2 features. His cinematography is luscious, even “artsy.” Frames of the rusty, beaten-up ‘Rose,’ miraculously appearing at the docks after its loss in a storm at sea 30 years ago, are close-up and colorful. Never has the look and sound of vessel technology—aged cables and winches, box upon box of gutted fish on crushed ice—been so mesmerizing. Elegant small-format camera work (Jenkin used a vintage Bolex) embellishes, and in some sense grounds and stabilizes, the surreal plot.
Rosalind Eleazar brings to Tina the sensual melancholy and not-so-repressed anger of Louisa from 5 seasons of “Slow Horses” (2022-25).
For followers of British TV and movies, there’s a pleasure in recognizing these excellent actors, who, unlike in “The Odyssey,” are less than household names. George MacKay, in the central role of Nick/Luke, was riveting when paired with Léa Seydoux in “The Beast” (2023), a French AI sci-fi. Callum Turner here is Liam/Alan; he played a similarly enigmatic, hard-to-parse character central to the first season of the superb British TV series about the machinations of AI, “The Capture” (2019). And Rosalind Eleazar brings to Tina the sensual melancholy and not-so-repressed anger of Louisa from 5 seasons of “Slow Horses” (2022-25).
Decay and loss—of a fishing boat, of community, of an economic order, of a predictable, satisfying life—pervade a film that otherwise feigns to be spare. In a framework that’s intimate and compact, Jenkin manages to display the effects of deindustrialization, of a dispiriting reduction in the accoutrements of a working-class round of life: the pub, the post-office, High Street (Americans would say Main Street), houses falling in on themselves, as is the aged population.
The loss of place and self—and the desire to recapture what’s missing—is a major theme in recent films.
The loss of place and self—and the desire to recapture what’s missing—is a major theme in recent films, whether small and wildly popular (“Backrooms,” “Obsession”), small but engaging (“The Last Guest of the Holloway Motel”), small Hollywood (“The Invite”), enormous and splashy (“The Odyssey”), or just weird (the auto-documentary “Remake”). “Rose of Nevada” is a worthy contribution to this discussion, which resonates in these unsettling times, when many of us, feeling adrift in an unanchored present, imagine a past that was more comfortable and routine, or long for home.
But then, maybe you can’t go home again.
She says: I’m not a sci-fi fan, but as I look at the amount of sci-fi, or at least sci-fi-lite, in that list of films above, and this one, maybe I’m warming to it.
He says: A Rorschach test: Are you Nick? Or Liam? Or Tina?
Date: 2026 (United States)
Director: Mark Jenkin
Starring: George MacKay, Callum Turner, Rosalind Eleazar, Francis Magee
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Runtime: 114 minutes
Other Awards: 1 win and 4 other nominations
Availability: Still showing in a few theaters in the United States, more in the United Kingdom, and some other locations internationally. A classic slow-rollout arthouse pattern: tiny footprint, long tail, rather than a simultaneous wide release. Streaming expected as soon as later this month (specifically August 24 in the UK through BFI) or next. See JustWatch here for updated online rental and purchase options.
Comments