MR PIP

Mr Pip is a drama/fantasy set in Bougainville 1991, as a civil war over mineral resources strengthens in the South Pacific.

Mr Watts (Hugh Laurie) reads the Charles Dickens classic novel Great Expectations in school, as a means of detaching the children from the darkness invading their lives. He forms a bond with Matilda (Xzannjah), a teenager whose imagination transports her into the Victorian novel where her entrancement with a character called Pip brings tragedy to the village.

Mr Pip is a visually stunning and compelling film. Poignant and extremely disturbing at times, it’s about friendship, heroism and reinvention, resonating how the goodness of a teacher enriched the life of an impressionable teenager living through the atrocities of war. (MM)

*** 1/2