Imagine if there was a mystical greenhouse which would allow you to walk back through past moments in your life? For Beth (Jane Watt), a doorway in the back of her home leads to a warped reality that replays her history. This gives the character a chance to reflect on her choices and last moments with the ones she loves. Mostly, Beth is able to visit her late mum Lillian (Rhondda Findleton) and spend time watching her best friend Lauren (Harriet Gordon-Anderson) before a tough decision caused a rift between them. Thomas Wilson-White’s debut centres around magical realism and captures the visceral pains of memory and loss. 

After her mum’s death, Beth makes the decision to stay behind to take care of her other mum Ruth (Camilla Ah Kin), who struggles to keep a grip on reality after losing her wife. With Ruth’s 60^th birthday coming up, her three siblings return home to celebrate. Things are most tense between Beth and her younger brother Rafferty (Joel Horwood), the awkwardness wedged between them like a block of ice. They slowly begin to reconnect, but the relationship between energetic sister Doonie (Kirsty Marillier) and the witty but laid back Drew (Shiv Palekar) is similarly strained. There’s an emotional tug-of-war between the family members, who fondly remember good moments in the house at dinnertime but don’t linger on them for too long.

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Ghostly plumes of smoke seep out from the greenhouse, accompanied by a gentle melody and distant voices. At night, Beth creeps out and descends further into a glass room, her eyes still crusty from sleep as she curiously wades into the foliage. Yet this alternate world doesn’t startle her too much, and it becomes a place of refuge from the chaos of her family home. An almost childlike gleam takes over Beth’s face as she embraces this obscure reality, but she also loses track of time back in the real world. Even within a proudly queer household, Beth struggles with her identity and feelings, and the greenhouse gives her the chance to look back on conversations with Lauren. Watt’s performance is patient, reflective and emotionally driven, eloquently conveying the complexities of a large family and the impact grief has on the person who chooses to stay behind.

The Greenhouse doesn’t fixate on Beth and Lauren’s relationship, but instead focuses on the collective sibling experience. Many of the scenes focus on Beth’s transition between the worlds within the greenhouse itself, a gothic tension lingering ominously as a reminder that this isn’t a place to dwell in for too long. Wilson-White’s film carries a similar visual style to Alex Garland’s Annihilation, another story with parallel places that toys with reality and imagination. The Greenhouse often swerves into sci-fi territory, the unstable past world being a symbolic omen that lifts the story away from realism. This dynamic prevents the tone from becoming too melancholic as the story lurches into a psychedelic nightmare.