Film Review: Camila Morrone is on another level as the mercurial Marmalade

Joe Keery in Marmalade (Signature Entertainment).

• Marmalade
• ★★★★☆
• Digital Download

Marmalade (15A) opens with dim-witted Baron (Joe Keery) sent to prison for bank robbery, the story of which he relates to his cellmate, Otis (Aldis Hodge), hoping Otis will help him escape in time to be reunited with his partner-in-crime, Marmalade (Camila Morrone).

But as Baron’s tale unfolds, we quickly realise Marmalade isn’t exactly a devoted Bonnie to Baron’s Clyde, but more a calculating femme fatale who has played Baron for a schmuck. Or do we?

Written and directed by Keir O’Donnell, Marmalade is a neo-noir that delights in second-guessing its audience.

Chock-a-block with unexpected twists, and decidedly more upbeat in tone than a typically fatalistic noir tends to be, it’s a love letter to the heist-gone-wrong movie that blends rom-com and hardboiled thriller.

Joe Keery is a study in pathos as the gullible, lovelorn rube Baron, but Camila Morrone is on another level as the mercurial Marmalade, who likes to rob banks while kitted out in pink baby-doll dresses and matching cowboy boots, and whose free-spirited wild-child channels Patricia Arquette’s Alabama in True Romance to bewitching effect.