variety.com
03.07.2023 / 05:09
54%
‘In Camera’ Review: An Actor Fails One Audition After Another — But Finds a Part — In an Acidly Funny Industry Satire
Guy Lodge Film Critic The thing Aden likes about acting, he tells someone who cares enough to ask, is “how organized it is.” You know where you stand, quite literally, because someone tells you; you’re given things to say, and told how to say them. Order and certainty aren’t typically seen as benefits of the thespian calling, and even Aden doesn’t sound entirely convinced of his own words. But then Aden — played, in a performance of brilliant, diamantine versatility, by Nabhaan Rizwan — is never entirely convinced of himself, period, when he hasn’t a script to follow or a character to inhabit. A simultaneously playful and savagely pointed satire from first-time feature director Naqqash Khalid, “In Camera” traces how its young British-Asian protagonist’s sense of identity is progressively diminished by the cynicism and tokenism of the industry he’s trying to crack — though as it turns out, when you lose yourself entirely, all is not lost.
