Dot the I

Carmen is a Spanish woman living in London. She is about to marry Barnaby; he is courteous, well off and orderly. At her hen dinner a tradition is described: the bride may kiss whoever she likes one last time. Carmen chooses a stranger at the table. Kit is an actor and is there that night. The kiss lasts. The next day Kit finds her. They start seeing each other. Carmen thinks about calling off the wedding. Then the narrative discloses something and everything seen until then takes on another meaning. Matthew Parkhill writes and directs. Natalia Verbeke plays Carmen, Gael García Bernal plays Kit and James D'Arcy plays Barnaby; Tom Hardy is in the cast. It is a British production. Its form turns; in the last section the film rearranges the premise and the earlier scenes read differently. The matter it treats is being recorded; the presence of a camera changes the events themselves. It was shot in London and is a low budget production. It is among Tom Hardy's early films. The narrative begins as romantic drama and changes genre, and the shift is deliberate. The second turn at the end is too much for some viewers. Its limit is structure; the turns pile on one another and the consistency does not fully hold in retrospect. Who it is for: viewers who like games with structure and British independent production. Who it is not for: the turns are strained, the characters thin, and the ending overblown.