Lady Macbeth

The impressive feature debut by theatre and opera director William Oldroyd is an adaptation of Nikolai Leskov’s novel Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1865), adapted into an opera by Shostakovich in 1934. Scriptwriter and playwright Alice Birch sets the story in Northumberland in 1865. Protagonists Katherine (a promising performance by Florence Pugh) is sold by her father to a sadistic mine owner, who envisages her as a wife for his both unfriendly and authoritarian son. Katherine is regularly humiliated and has to stay indoors all the time. Very occasionally she escapes to the heath, where she feels free. When her husband is absent, she starts a passionate affair with the servant, Sebastian. 
The story is largely set inside the house, where taut visual composition underlines the oppressive, puritanical mood. The nature and sex scenes, however, are captured with looser camerawork.

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