Room

Space travel: Jacob Tremblay and Brie Larson

In the room, Joy and her five-year-old son have found a sort of equilibrium. For Jack, it’s all he’s ever known, but for Joy there is an alternative. The ‘other’ world – that place populated by other children, by cats and dogs, and by trees and houses – is a magic place dreamed up by the television in the room. But for Jack, the real world stretches all the way to the end, round and round the four corners of his small universe…

The claustrophobic domain of Emma Donoghue's 2010 award-winning novel cannot have seemed an obvious project for a movie. But Donoghue wrote the screenplay herself before any filmmakers came begging. To sustain the emotional drama of the piece one needed two outstanding actors and the Irish director Lenny Abrahamson has found them. The seven-year-old Jacob Tremblay is simply extra-ordinary as Jack, a damned fine reason to see the film in itself. But Brie Larson is every bit as good as Joy and together they collude to create 2015’s most consistently gripping, moving and original drama. And Brie Larson will be receiving her first Oscar nomination this month (Ed: which she did, and the Oscar to boot).

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay.

Dir Lenny Abrahamson, Pro Ed Guiney and David Gross, Screenplay Emma Donoghue, Ph Danny Cohen, Pro DesEthan Tobman, Ed Nathan Nugent, Music Stephen Rennicks, Costumes Lea Carlson.

TG4 Films/Nope Films/Mauvais Plan, Inc./CampTrace Entertainment/Lester Productions-StudioCanal.
117 mins. Ireland/Canada. 2015. Rel: 15 January 2015. Cert. 15.