Ray & Liz

Ray & Liz (2018) is a British drama you can watch online on iFILM, the debut feature from photographer Richard Billingham. It reconstructs three episodes from the director's own childhood — a council flat on the outskirts of Birmingham, Thatcher's Britain, a household held in place by nothing much.

Ray is the father: horizontal, drunk, more or less absent as a functioning person. Liz is the mother — loud, tattooed, operating at some remove from conventional maternal warmth. The children move around them both. Justin Salinger and Ella Smith play the roles without sentimentality and without judgment.

Billingham's reputation came from a celebrated series of close-up photographs of his father — raw, shot on cheap film — that toured galleries worldwide through the nineties. This is the same gaze made cinematic. Hard to watch. Hard to look away from. Stream Ray & Liz (2018) online on iFILM.