Anemone Review – 'A showcase for a monumental talent'

For the horticulturally challenged, the anemone is a delicate plant that closes its petals as a storm approaches. For a story about withdrawing from the world and becoming emotionally bottled up, the flower-as-metaphor title is perhaps the most on-the-nose thing about Ronan Day-Lewis’ feature debut. Anemone is co-written with and starring his father Daniel in his first on-screen appearance since 2017’s Phantom Thread . It is sad, absurdist, brooding, tender and intense. What were you expecting? Broad toilet humour?

The dark heart of the matter is the fractured relationship between soldier siblings Ray (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Jem Stoker (Sean Bean). Twenty years after tours of duty during the Troubles, Ray survives off the grid in a forest (where Ocado definitely won’t deliver), livin