Daily Telegraph, 16 July 1992, by Hugo Davenport
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<snip>

"Dakota Road," a British-made tale of thwarted desire and 
family disintegration set amid the bleak East Anglian 
fenlands, is the debut feature of writer-director Nick Ward. 
It is an honourable attempt to evoke the stunted lives of 
repressed, uncommunicative people living in an isolated 
community, centred on a 15-year-old girl taking her first 
steps into the dangerous domain of adult sexuality. Jen 
Cross (Charlotte Chatton) lives in the shadow of a US air 
force base with her father, Bernard (Matthew Scurfield), her 
mother, Maud (Amelda Brown) and a knowing younger sister, 
Amy (Rachel Scott). The jets flying overhead evoke longing 
for a world beyond the featureless landscape; meanwhile she 
couples lovelessly in the open fields with Raif (Jason 
Carter) as the local landowner, Alan Brandon (Alan Howard), 
spies on them through a telescope from the big house. Jen's 
family is riven with ill-suppressed hatred. There is a 
strong suggestion of past incestuousness with her father, 
which has blighted her capacity to feel. The vicar, Rev. 
Stonea (David Warrilow), shows an affection for Raif that 
hints at some violation of taboo on his own part; elderly 
shopkeeper Joan Benson (Liz Smith) has brought Raif up by 
her own, more charitable religious lights. When Bernard 
makes a complaint to Brandon about pesticides poisoning the 
river, hoping to regain his daughter's favour, he is sacked. 
Soon after - humiliated by his wife's new job as Brandon's 
cleaner - he kills himself. Teenage pregnancy, eviction and 
much gloomy staring out of windows follow. By the end, Amy 
has understandably had enough. Though the film is splendidly 
shot by Ian Wilson, making the most of the exposed landscape 
and its patches of unexpected lushness, it founders on a 
relentless rural miserabilism (surely, even in Norfolk, 
people now use squeegee mops to clean the floor rather than 
going down on hands and knees). The dialogue is of such 
studied inarticulacy that it courts caricature. And the less 
said about the sunlit epiphany of Bernard's abandoned boots, 
the better. 

<snip>



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