By Maahin Akhlaque.

Successful London-based playwright Debbie Tucker Green makes her feature film debut as writer and director with a Second Coming, a family drama with big ideas behind it. Having had a great career writing plays for the Royal Court Theatre and the Young Vic, and also written a BAFTA winning TV series, it only seems natural for Green to move to the film medium.

Second Coming tells the story of a normal South London family, punctuated by stages in Jackie’s (Nadine Marshall) unexplainable pregnancy. Unsure of how it is possible, since it’s been a while since she slept with her husband, Mark (Idris Elba), it begins to affect her mind as well as her body, as she tries to hide it as long as possible.

I’m not familiar with Tucker’s work as a playwright, but I would imagine she’s tackling a world that she knows and as worked with before, and why she has done so well shows. It’s very well written, and she tackles it as a director as someone who might be a few films old, not a first time director, which can be both talent and the familiarity with the world she’s showing us. But the strongest aspect of the film is definitely the performances of its three main characters, Jackie, Mark and their son JJ, played Kai Francis-Lewis. The young actor is as strong in his role as the more experienced cast members, and the film would probably not hold its audience’s attention if these three were not as strong.

It’s nice for a debut British film to not be a cliched crime drama for once. The film deals with a couple of big ideas, an immaculate conception, and the mental health of a pregnant woman, but narratively it is quite sparse. It takes its time to tell the story it wants to, which is bordering on indulgently slow, but the performances just about save it, making Second Coming definitely worth sitting through.

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