Even in the height of summer, director Lee Haven Jones’ Gwledd (The Feast) is sending chills down Keiron Self’s spine. Allow him to tell you why!
Gwledd (The Feast), a superb Welsh lyrical horror, marks Lee Haven Jones’ first outing as a feature film director following acting roles for stage and screen. As a TV director, Jones has also worked on Dr Who and Vera and the upcoming Wolf series.
Over 18 days in June/July 2019, with a top-drawer Welsh cast assembled, The Feast was shot just outside Llanbister in Powys, in a modernist building known as Life House. Designed by English architect John Pawson in a stripped-back Japanese style, this bungalow provided an ironic, claustrophobic shell for the death and despair that was filmed there. Roger Williams tailored his script to accommodate the house’s architecture – including a meditation cell with a hole in the roof, rendering the film akin to a site-specific theatre piece.
An ‘elevated horror’ that is both visually dynamic and with a slow burn, The Feast draws on Jones and Williams’ stage roots. It starts with a degree of naturalism, almost like a Chekhovian play, before descending into expressionism and gore, becoming a Greek drama via some Brechtian chapter headings – a clear, bold intention from its creators.
Jones acknowledges that both his theatre background and the osmosis of his love of horror and the works of European and Eastern filmmakers, fed into his subconscious whilst making the film. Hence there are flashes of Peter Greenaway, South Korean horror, Scandi-noir and more interesting (“less vacuous”, in his words) horror tropes. He also points to the underlying themes: a modernist house in the middle of rural beauty, the clash of greed and tradition, myth and history and an eco-friendly subtext. Horror always works best when it’s about something.
It’s also very niche: intentionally and specifically Welsh, drawing on the nation’s rich mythology and lyricism. A real strength, he believes, striking back against an increasingly “homogenised market”, The Feast is a Welsh-language production and revels in its visuals, with no dialogue in its opening seven minutes. Jones wants the images to do the talking.
After years of working in TV, Jones was hellbent on subverting conventions. “Television is inevitably more dialogue-based,” he notes; “we tend to spoon-feed people narrative and plot.” The Feast was intentionally less obvious than that, and its strong style has paid off – with the film gaining plaudits from festivals around the world, including a ‘best director’ nod from Bifan in South Korea (a real honour for Jones, who loves the inventive horror from that region).
Now, the film has finally arrived back in Wales, having previously opened elsewhere around the world – a recognisably Welsh occurrence, and Jones is more than aware of that pattern of creative people and projects having to do well outside of Wales before they can be a success within their own country.
“You step into an art gallery: there’s an object in the middle of the room, with space around it, and as a viewer, you project your thoughts and feelings on to that piece and make of it what you will. To quote Howard Barker, ‘art is a problem of understanding’.” The audience is part of the creative process and Jones wants them to feel a provocation. “TV is something you consume, but cinema is something you should interact with and revisit.”
With The Feast, he and Roger Williams have created a truly distinctive Welsh horror that resonates. With many more projects on the horizon and an upcoming TV film about the birth of S4C, Lee Haven Jones’ output remains eclectic and diverse – but he hopes he can revisit the horror genre soon. If it’s anywhere near as good as this feature, we will be in for an elevated, if often grisly, treat.
Gwledd (The Feast) is in cinemas from Fri 19 Aug