Keeping Rosy - film review

Two marginalised women clash in a tense, London-set drama, hauntingly shot by veteran cinematographer Roger Pratt. He is best known for his work on the Harry Potter series and helped create the seminal London movies Meantime and Mona Lisa. He’s got a great eye for grit.

Tightly wound, childless executive Charlotte (TV face of the moment, Maxine Peake) misses out on promotion and vents her misery on young Polish cleaner, Maya (Elisa Lasowski).

It’s annoying that the script, co-written by first-time director Steve Reeves, is full of holes (we’re asked to believe that the cleaner would lug a heavy birthday present to work, while a visiting infant proves uncannily quiet, and the climax is a complete joke).

Luckily, Peake’s pinched face provides plenty of distraction. The 39-year-old actress is the Miranda Richardson of our time; brittle, sensual and frail. I’m not a fan of people who have “staff” (why can’t people clean up their own mess?) so I was determined to loathe the immaculate Charlotte yet, thanks to Peake, I found myself willing her on. The beautiful Lasowski has barely any screen time but is also superb.

A second half — which involves Charlotte’s flaky sister from up North (Christine Bottomley) and a shifty but smart young security guard (Blake Harrison from The Inbetweeners) — adds to our sense of how the capital divides and rules. Poles, cockneys and northerners: they’re expendable in this universe. The only characters seen sitting pretty are the middle-class southerners who Charlotte works alongside: urbane, superficially decent types who’ve made use of her obsessive dedication but never quite accepted her as one of the gang.

Reeves’s claim to fame is that he shot that Agent Provocateur ad with Kylie Minogue. He’s not in sexy mode, here, but our heroine’s moral crisis does generate a nice bit of heat.