Showing @ Cineworld, Edinburgh, Thu 27 & Sat 29 Jun

Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel / France/UK/USA / 2012 / 87 mins

Leviathan‘s publicity indicates that this is unlike any film you have seen before, a claim which seems accurate enough on viewing. Whether that is a strength or a weakness will be very much down to personal taste. The subject matter is straightforward enough: life aboard a working trawler off the New Bedford coast. What makes Leviathan so unusual is its treatment of this material. Where one might expect a straightforward documentary (the directors are both anthropologists), the aesthetic bears more resemblance to a horror film with handheld cameras, stark lighting, menacing sound effects and even Gothic fonts for the credits.

Without plot or indeed dialogue as such, Leviathan becomes a purely sensory experience: rumbling waves and groaning metal, the ethereal pearlescent flesh of a dying catch which takes on a landscape-like quality when filmed at eye level, droplets of water that appear literally like crystals flashing before the camera. Not all viewers will be satisfied with the experience, but for those willing to forego the need for action and story and allow themselves to be swept along in the experience, Leviathan is uniquely hypnotic.

Showing as part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2013