ESCHEWING the straightforward narrative arcs of social realism employed by a Ken Loach or a Mike Leigh, in Bait director Mark Jenkin’s Brechtian approach never lets us forget we’re watching a film.

That sense of confronting material reality is there in the hand-processed images, scratchy and lined and a soundscape that engages yet disturbs.

The dialogue, recorded and then dubbed, imbues the uncomprehending, Pinteresque conversations —  clipped and occassionally comic — with an eerie sense of alienation, abetted by moments where the plot runs ahead of itself.