The End We Start From review – Jodie Comer compels in solid survival drama

Anyone who’s been fortunate enough to witness Jodie Comer’s astonishing all-timer of a performance in the one-woman show Prima Facie will be aware that there really is very little that the actor can’t and won’t do. It wasn’t exactly a surprise that Comer could pull it off (later seasons of the once-great Killing Eve required her to hold the whole, rickety thing up by herself) but no one could have predicted just how astonishing she would be, a gruelling gambit so effectively pulled off that one wondered if anyone else would be able to do it quite as well.

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It’s inevitably time for the star to make her mark on the big screen and after a big movie that offered her very little (Free Guy) and a big movie that was sadly seen by very few (The Last Duel), Comer has secured her first movie lead in something smaller, a chance for those outside the privileged world of theatregoing to see what she can really do when given full control. The survival drama The End We Start From is a thoughtful but simple film, perhaps not quite distinctive enough to make a truly indelible impression within a busy subgenre, but it’s a persuasive showcase for Comer, the movie star.

She plays a new mother whose baby has arrived at the same time as disaster has hit, mass flooding that has made her home in London untenable. Together with her husband (played by the charming Joel Fry, no stranger to major crises after starring in Ben Wheatley’s pandemic horror In the Earth), they flee up north to find safety. Based on the book by Megan Hunter, the film is less focused on the bigger picture (scenes of chaos at large are kept to a minimum) and more on the people trying to survive it.

It’s about the anxieties that come with the realities of motherhood, pushed to their most extreme in the direst of circumstances, a radical need to protect suddenly blossoming and how that can either make or break you. It’s a stressful escalation, potential danger on the edge of every frame, and there’s a blunt directness in how it’s presented that’s effectively economic, the director Mahalia Belo avoiding sentimental indulgence. There’s an interesting throughline about the limits of support, how much we can trust others to support us and how much we can trust ourselves to be supportive, the film wrestling with the power of I versus we. But in order to really underline its thesis, the story demands Comer be alone with her baby, and the contortions made to get her there start to feel a bit illogical. The journey she is sent on does offer up a punchy cameo for the producer Benedict Cumberbatch as well as a bigger role for a fantastic Katherine Waterston, as a fast friend met in a shelter, but as the film enters its final act, the pace can border on the meandering.

There’s just about enough care and sensitivity in The End We Start From to offset its issues, providing us with an unusual, female-powered alternative within a field of films that are usually heavier on action than words. It’s carried to the finish line by Comer, an actor whose naturalism is an ideal fit for a character forced to constantly react to the ever-changing situation in front of her, no time for anything but a need to survive. When she does get the briefest of pauses, to deliver a moving monologue about a deep-rooted fear of death or to finally allow herself to cry, it’s all the more impactful for the restraint that’s surrounding and Comer is outstanding whatever the mode. As a big screen star, she’s just beginning.

• The End We Start From is screening at the Toronto film festival with a release date yet to be announced