London noir is a rare subgenre — and an especially difficult one to pull off — but Michele Fiascaris’ debut Rain Catcher is a satisfying, seductively atmospheric addition to the canon that will keep even the most jaded of viewers on the alert. The largely unfamiliar cast lend an air of unpredictability that serves the central mystery well, while the city itself — the bulk of the events take place in the brutalist confines of the Barbican Estate — plays an admirable supporting role. Important, too, is the fact that Fiascaris’s film also touches on some interesting issues too, principally the increasingly dehumanizing side-effects of social media.
The pseudonymous ‘Rain Catcher’ who gives the film its title is the alter ego of Miles (Dudley O’Shaughnessy), a street photographer who cruises the streets at night taking compromising pictures of people who don’t know they’re being seen, let alone photographed. His million Instagram followers think of him as the second coming of Banksy, but plenty more think of him as a peeping Tom, a voyeuristic intruder who insinuates himself into private spaces.
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Miles’s ambivalence about this is laid out in the opening sequence, in which, while moonlighting for a tabloid newspaper, he manipulates his singer-songwriter girlfriend Cassie (Iris Law) into taking part in a sting aimed to expose a seedy record producer called Nico. While snapping away with a long-lens camera from a nearby rooftop, Nico watches as Nico tries to flatter her (“Our new Norah Jones!”) but nevertheless insists she audition for him (“I need to know if you’re good enough”). Since Cassie is already on edge, the performance goes badly. Nico offers cocaine to calm her nerves and crudely propositions her, at which point Cassie raises the alarm and blows Miles’s cover.
Miles escapes, but the events of that night will come back big time. In the meantime, haunted by his actions, he tries to immerse himself in his work, becoming obsessed with a national art competition with a top prize of £30,000, more than enough to pay his back rent and keep his landlord from banging on his door. Unable to contact Cassie, Miles becomes fascinated by Yumi (Jessie Mei Li), who lives in the block opposite, and the pair strike up an unexpected romance, even after she discovers he’s been spying on her.
At the same time, Miles starts to notice a presence in his pictures, a woman in a raincoat (Kate Dickie) staring intently into the camera. Shortly afterwards, somebody attempts to out him, by hacking his Instagram profile and posting pictures of his real face in place of his cryptic avatar. There follows a leafletting campaign, accusing him of being a pervert and a danger to children. To find who’s doing all of this, Miles traces the mystery woman to an apartment, which he breaks into under cover of night, accidentally killing the occupant in the process and making his own prospects for redemption suddenly very bleak indeed.
It sounds a lot to take in and it is, especially with a running time that is slightly too long for a film that takes quite a few risks with its narrative logic. The script, likewise, is often a little on the nose, often saying out loud what ought to be subtext and undercutting the rich sense of mystery that envelops the film right up until the big reveal. And the reveal itself? It’s hard to say how it all lands without spoiling the whole thing, since it is a very, very specific subset of the horror-fantasy genre (a mild comparison would Omer Fast’s trippy 2015 psychodrama Remainder). It’s a little far-fetched, but it does work, and it completely upends everything you were thinking about the plotting, the acting, and the fact that, once again, you under-estimated Kate Dickie’s incredibly subtle range.
Smart streamers might want to consider Rain Catcher as a series — think Slow Horses meets The Fugitive — but Fiascaris’s film stands up perfectly well as a one-off. Genre enthusiasts will find lots to like here, from its rich saturated nighttime ambience to the moody, cine-techno score by Aeph. It’s a film about what happens in the shadows, and its time in the spotlight starts now.
Title: Rain Catcher
Festival: Karlovy Vary (Proxima Competition)
Director: Michele Fiascaris
Screenwriters: Filippo Polesel, Michele Fiascaris, Alba Moyano
Cast: Dudley O’Shaughnessy, Jessie Mei Li, Iris Law, Kate Dickie, Youssef Kerkour, Lorenzo Richelmy
Running time: 1 hr 51 mins
