Written and directed by Alastair Siddons, tasked with flogging a seemingly endless cycle of questionable products, star presenter, Hailey Cartin, is starting to fear she might be trapped in live television. When a rival product demonstrator eventually forces Hailey to confront her own quest-defying reality, will she ever be able to climb out of the hole she’s now in? Maybe. But maybe not. (And certainly not without the generous help of the film’s sponsors, HOLE_AID). Starring: Lyndsey Marshal, John Macmillan, Morgana Robinson, Sam Spruell, Shiloh Coke and Anastasia Hille.
When it comes to performances that require intense breakdowns with a good dash of personality and sarcasm, you can’t go wrong with Lyndsey Marshal. With her blended background of comedy and drama, she’s excellent at using a combination of all of those skills to create funny, charming characters who can also be unhinged, deranged or unravelled. Hailey is a pretty great example of that, especially because the situation she finds herself in is so niche and bizarre, so she has to do that while basically carrying the majority of Up the Catalogue as it’s so intently focused on her character. Marshal is unquestionably a big part of what keeps you locked in, and one of the strongest elements the film has to offer.
Up the Catalogue is unquestionably weird, offbeat and surreal right out of the gate. There’s a palpable awkwardness and Alastair Siddons builds a great atmosphere of intrigue. Everything is slightly wrong, nothing is entirely natural and it gradually creates a classic trap, repeating the same cycle, as the character slowly catches on. It progresses well, slowly raising that bizarre bar and its intensity. As well as creating a great combination of mental breakdown and silly, overt comedy.
The visual is strong to create an environment that makes it feel like a strange, luminously lit British cousin to Exit 8. It’s all very bright and consistent, those white walls make for a great parable to old-school mental asylums. It’s clinical and minimal, so that when things fall apart later on, it can expand beyond that to match the collapsing story. However, the way in which this story unravels is not the most satisfying. It’s entertaining to go further down that rabbit hole with Hailey, but when she does reach her final destination, there’s simply too many unanswered questions to nicely wrap up the experience.
Up the Catalogue has a terrific surreal quality, a unique personality and features a superb cast, led excellently by Lyndsey Marshal, who deserves a lot more flowers than she gets. John Macmillan and Morgana Robinson are unsurprisingly great additions as well who excel at this type of absurdist comedy. It’s a fun concept, and naming the channel 4Q is a perfect touch, but its surreal nature can only take it so far. The elements all work well, the visual, the tone, the performances, the atmosphere, the intensity but it doesn’t ultimately come to a satisfying conclusion. Without that final punch or bite to cleverly wrap things up, it sadly just peters out.
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