I saw this film, starring Jodie Comer and Joel Fry, without knowing much about it. I essentially chose it by timeslot.

Regrettably, I wouldn’t recommend it.

The film is an allegory for new parenthood. It begins with an unnamed female character giving birth to a son, Zeb, while Britain is experiencing catastrophic flooding. Events increasingly isolate the mother and baby from friends and family members, as they are forced to battle for food and survival while the world around them falls apart. The nameless woman and her baby find refuge in various places, like state support (shelters), a new friend with a similarly aged child, and a structured commune (NCT group).

The film is based on a novel by Megan Hunter, and I can imagine the metaphor working well in a book, where we might understand more about the interior life of the central character. Unfortunately, I didn’t think it translated well to the screen—but it’s hard to imagine how it ever could.

The cinematic problem is that the allegorical events align too closely with the literal events they relate to. It’s hard to say something profound about new motherhood through metaphor when the metaphor you are using also centres on new motherhood.

For example: of course new motherhood can be a profoundly isolating experience. But when you represent that by putting a mother a child in a literally isolated position, walking through a sodden barren landscape, the mother’s reactions read very strangely, with none of the expected character development. This doesn’t work: it leaves the characters feeling remote, at a conceptual remove from the audience. Jodie Comer’s talent was wasted.

There was some spectacular cinematography in here, but also some baffling decisions: taking a speedboat through a version of central London submerged in eight feet of water was visually arresting, sat well within the metaphor (seeing the world differently) but made no sense in the context of the allegorical plot (there’s no use asking volunteers to clean up a submerged London).

Honestly, this film left me feeling bored: it was way too heavy-handed and way too preachy. On the other hand, professional critics, who—unlike me—know something about film, have generally given it positive reviews. Perhaps you shouldn’t let my criticism put you off.

I’ve long been a bit sceptical of filmed stage plays, but I’d heard so much about the power of Judie Comer’s performance in this one-woman play that I thought I’d stream it.

The plot concerns a barrister who specialises in defending sexual assault cases, but is then assaulted herself. For the first two-thirds, this felt like an virtuoso performance of a well-scripted but humdrum plot. It felt like a legal equivalent of the doctor-turned-patient cliché, with much the same by-rote conclusions about not giving enough consideration to the perspective of the victim/patient.

This impression wasn’t helped by the sound design, which is also a cliché: heartbeat-driven tension beds, which feel as though they do more to undermine the raw honesty of Comer’s performance than to support it.

But then: that final section! Emotion meets polemic meets rage meets eloquence meets honesty. Never mind the theatre, you could have heard a pin drop in my carpeted living room.

This turned out to be an astonishing performance of an excellent script.

’Prima Facie’ is available to stream via National Theatre at Home until 9 March.