Rose of Nevada Review: What Matters in Life

Mark Jenkin’s Rose of Nevada is a hypnotic, haunting film that bends genre and storytelling conventions to remind us of our fundamental human needs.

It all starts when the titular boat appears in the old harbour of a forgotten, derelict fishing village in Cornwall. “She’s back,” says one of the residents, looking alarmed. Soon, we learn that the Rose of Nevada had been lost at sea for thirty years, following a tragedy that led to the disappearance of two men. One of these men was Alan, the husband of a woman named Tina (Rosalind Eleazar, of Slow Horses), now single mother to two adult daughters, one of which (Yana Emily Penrose) flirts with one of our protagonist, down on his luck fisherman Liam (Callum Turner, of The Boys in the Boat), when she briefly meets him at the local pub after he’s just arrived at the village.

The other is Luke, the son of Billy Richards (Adrian Rawlins, of One Life) and his wife (Mary Woodvine, who starred in Jenkin’s Bait and Enys Men and is also the director’s partner). Mrs. Richards looks just as old and neglected as the town; her grief has clouded her thoughts and she often visits her neighbors, the Dyers, in distress, mistaking their son Nick (George MacKay, of The End and Femme) for her own. As for the Richardsons, they are having some troubles of their own, as the roof of their house has just fallen down and Nick has no money to fix it.

When it is decided that the Rose of Nevada will sail again, both Nick and Liam join the crew as deckhands – the former hoping to earn enough money to feed his partner and child, and the latter because he has no ties anywhere, not even a home to call his own. It turns out to be a very fruitful trip, as Nick, Liam, and skipper Murgey (Francis Magee) catch a lot of fish.

But when the boat gets back to the harbor, something has changed. “You’ve been on a boat for a year, boy,” a younger Billy Richards tells Nick, mistaking him for his son Luke, while Tina greets Liam as if he was her husband Alan. Soon, our heroes realize they’ve somehow gone back in time, and everyone thinks they’re the original crew of the Rose of Nevada. But how can they explain what happened to them? How do they get back to their own time? And if they belong to the future but the past is relying on them to catch fish, how can they make a choice without anyone getting hurt?

Since Nick and Liam have very different situations back home, they react to this sudden change in very different ways, almost as polar opposites. Eventually, the choice comes down to whether they should try to get to the bottom of this in a logical way and put a stop to time traveling altogether, or simply accept that Tina and the Richards are their families now, and try their best to support this different, yet somehow alike, version of a place – and people – they still feel attached to.

What happens is left for you to discover, but if you’ve ever seen a Mark Jenkin movie, you might have an idea of what you’re in for. The writer-director, who is also the film’s cinematographer, editor, composer, and sound designer, juxtaposes images and sounds with such creativity and craft that you’ll be hypnotized by the images you see, with the movie unfolding all around you as you simply take it all in.

At times, you’ll laugh at the very well-placed humor throughout the film, which will ground you back to the present of your own room; at others, the editing, image composition, and sound design will make for haunting, distressing storytelling, not unlike that of a claustrophobic horror film. There is a time travel element to the movie, but it also asks philosophical questions, like the matter of which timeline came first, and who these characters even are, in the end.

And then there’s the boat itself, which is both the one constant Nick and Liam can always come back to – and the only entity that knows who they really are – and a nightmarish land where happiness comes from death, life is put on hold, and no one belongs anywhere.

Rose of Nevada is a difficult movie to describe, as its visual and storytelling style are so singular and specific to Jenkin that you’ll have to experience it for yourself. It won’t be for everyone precisely because of this, but if you’re willing to go with it, you’ll be surprised by how much it’ll affect you.

The story itself and the feeling it will leave you with play a big part on the film’s success, both in terms of narrative and technical execution, but if this movie works as well as it does, it’s also thanks to Callum Turner and George MacKay, who are flawless. It’s a highly challenging role for both actors, as it required incredible control over the emotions they both conjured up in every scene, often with little to no words spoken out loud, but also with hard physical work in the scenes in the boat. Both alone and together, the two stars portray their characters with such introspection and heart that Nick and Liam become our anchors in the chaos, no matter how lost they are.

Liam is the warmest, more spontaneous character, and Turner instantly conjures chemistry with every single star with whom he shares the screen, no matter how short their screen time together is. Liam’s choices come from a desire to belong that we can always perceive within the surface, and that’s what makes him so relatable and human. Nick, on the other hand, is a very introverted figure – one who keeps everything buried inside and whose conflict takes place entirely within himself. But MacKay makes this internal struggle so painfully visible that he elicits so many contrasting emotions in us, until the question stops being “What happened in the past?” and starts to become “What should happen in the future?”.

“Can I tell you something?,” Liam asks Nick, halfway through the film. “Does it matter?,” Nick asks back. Rose of Nevada is a film of many messages, but that question is the main takeaway I got from it. We’re all born and then we die, with no control over what happens to us in the limited time we have on this planet. But as we’re all on the same boat, drifting at sea and trying to catch enough fish to stay afloat, the one thing that keeps us human – and that makes life worth living – is the connections we make, be it with loved ones or strangers. And if we find a place, or a community, that’s ready to love and embrace us, that, alone, is enough to make life worth living.

Rose of Nevada had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival on August 30, 2025. The film will be screened at TIFF on September 6, at the New York Film Festival on October 1, and at the BFI London Film Festival in October.