A film about the minutiae of fishing flies sounds like ‘niche interest’ defined, but Eric Steel’s documentary is too lovely to ghettoise.
After The Bridge , his film about suicide, Steel turns a gentler eye to Megan Boyd, an outsider who devoted a rugged life in the Scottish Highlands to fly-tying.
Good enough to gain royal custom, Boyd’s robust flies were works of art and heart.
So is Steel’s film, which deploys talking heads, dreamy animations and lyrical music to trace the arc of Boyd’s life and mount a poetic, poignant tribute to the seductive mystique of a rarefied craft.
