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Film

In Camera review – a potent comment on race and identity in the film industry

In Camera is a sharp and original, genre-bending satire of the film industry that promises much from debut director Naqqash Khalid

Nabhaan Rizwan as Aden in the movie In Camera

Nabhaan Rizwan as Aden, with his white-shirted fellow actors

It will take a good cleaner to remove the fake blood stains ingrained in Aden’s (Nabhaan Rizwan) t-shirt after a few hours lying on the hard floor of a sterile TV set playing a nameless cadaver. This is no glamorous job, he knows, but at least it is a job, and Aden is not having much luck with those by the time we meet him at the beginning of Naqqash Khalid’s feature debut, In Camera

Aden justifies his love of acting by pointing out how organised it is. An actor is told where to stand, what to do, what to feel and what to say. An actor knows what will come next, even when oblivious to what came before. If acting is orderliness, auditioning is chaos, a process rooted only in the certainty of uncertainty. But a budding actor needs to audition, and so Aden does, putting on a white shirt and a brave face to come in and out of reception rooms filled with fellow hopefuls.  

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These waiting rooms serve as a fitting metaphor for the racial politics of entertainment, with Khalid following Aden into small spaces filled with dozens of men who share similar brown skin, dark hair and dark eyes. It is a claustrophobic predicament, made even more so by how cinematographer Tasha Back frames the bodies in the room as if they’re merging, quick glimpses at limbs, collarbones and eyes that make up for a blurry, homogenous mishmash. The actors, all wearing the same white T and blue jeans, have no name. They are numbers, referred to by (often white) assistants and casting directors as the numbers on their tags. 

When Aden is finally given a name in a job, it isn’t in the way he expected. The role he plays is that of a woman’s dead son in an experimental kind of therapy session that hires actors to act out people’s loved ones in the hopes of helping process the grief. This job, at once odd and compassionate, has Aden confronting the idea of acting without the crutches of a controlled environment. Grief is chaos, and the whirlwind of feelings it entices proves a tricky maze to navigate for a young man whose demeanour is cemented in stoicism, a feeling exacerbated by the arrival of new flatmate Conrad (Amir El-Masry). 

Conrad finds immediate kinship in Aden, peppering their conversations with nods to the proverbial “us” that unites the two British-Asian men. “The industry is responding to our needs. We’re the new currency and we’ve got to use it,” the fashion designer tells the deflated actor, never doubtful of a prosperous future ahead. But to Aden, Conrad’s easy-going confidence and boisterousness seems nothing but foreign, both men physically alike but dissimilar in all else. 

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If Rizwan plays Aden with an unsettling sense of restraint, El-Masry infuses his pristine bon vivant with garish charm. 

Khalid’s debut falters only in the time it dedicates to trailing Aden’s other flatmate, Bo (Rory Fleck Byrne). The overworked junior doctor takes In Camera to This Is Going to Hurt territory, and the vignettes alluding to the draining working conditions of healthcare workers prove not only distracting but futile. The sequences taking place at the hospital cause an unwelcome sense of whiplash, and the parallel between the toll taken by the two vastly different professions is not as strong as the film’s earlier commentary on race and identity. This storyline not only stunts the pace but threatens to dilute the potency of a film that employs horror and thriller elements to create an accomplished sense of dread.

Thankfully, In Camera only wobbles, quickly sidelining the doctor to turn its full attention back to Aden’s unravelling. It’s a choice that sees the film return to the sharp pace of its opening scene in more ways than one, with Khalid confidently tying the bow on this genre-bending satire that signals the arrival of a director with just as strong a sense of substance as one of style. 

In Camera is in cinemas now. 

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