Citrus Kino x Queer Fear: The Lighthouse at Pictureville Cinema

There’s a fun bit of anti-Valentine’s programming scheduled in Bradford this February the 14th as Citrus Kino and Queer Fear team up for a showing of Robert Eggers’ nineteenth-century maritime two-hander starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. Part psychological horror and part dark farce, the film tracks two lighthouse keepers, one seasoned (Dafoe) and another fresh to the job (Pattinson) as they try to avoid succumbing to madness while working on a remote and mysterious island in New England circa. 1890.

The double-act are tested by hurling gales and roaring waves, while the foghorns blare and seagulls scream incessantly — but the real test comes as the pair begin to wrestle with the isolation, and each other. The relationship quickly turns poisonous as venomous power-plays and the islands own mysteries create an atmosphere where neither the audience nor the lighthouse keepers themselves can trust the events (and creatures) that emerge.

Eggers heightens the atmosphere by choosing to film in stark black and white academy ratio, emphasising the otherworldy, out-of-time-ness of the setting in a way that could be overly alienating or discordant. Luckily, The Lighthouse is really funny, and the florid, filthy period dialogue the director, co-writing with his brother Max, is known for is given a knowing pep by the two leads — Dafoe has admitted that for all the research that went into period authenticity, his accent in the film is really just a standard Hollywood pirate.

So if your looking for more mermaids and masturbation jokes than provided by your regular romantic comedy, then Citrus Kino and Queer Fear have lined up the Valentine’s Day for you.