In Camera (2024)

The camera clearly loves Nabhaan Rizwan in this quirky tale of would-be actor "Aden" who spends most of his life travelling from audition to photo-shoot then back to an audition without ever getting a call back. It's clear that he's swimming against a tide of hundreds of like-minded aspirants and it's hard to see how he's going to break his duck. He shares a flat with the permanently over-tired doctor "Bo" (Rory Fleck Byrne) but maybe things could pick up with their debonaire new sharer "Conrad" (Amir El-Masry) shows up. Might his luck be about to improve? Or - might our friend have taken a bit of a leap into an alternate reality where his sub-conscious has started to change the repetitive dynamic of his life from one of repeated rejection to one of potential. By mid-way through, it's not at all clear to us just what is real and what might not be - and it's quite a bamboozling feeling to have! Rizwan brings some charisma to his frustrated role, certainly, and there's some genuinely funny moments to be taken from his increasing despondency, but somehow I found the whole thing just a bit too disjointed and the characterisations undercooked. He is obviously a British-Asian, but are his experiences seeking success with his chosen career likely to be any less disappointing that anyone from a different background/ethnicity? I'm assuming 99% of people who embark on this sort of path end up working on tables and only ever see the bright lights of their shaving mirror? If it's trying to illustrate a complex sense of anxiety and it's consequences, then it misses completely, I'm afraid. Why should we care about the self-inflicted misery of a great looking man who could just easily go and do something else? Though I did like the exploratory premiss that director Naqqash Khalid is trying to take, I just felt too much was left undeveloped. It's worth a watch, and I'm sure we will see more from both the leading creatives here - but this one, I'm not sure I will remember for long.