The Zen Buddhist storytelling tradition employs a paradoxical narrative – the kōan – at first opaque and seemingly unknowable, designed to provoke the inquiring mind into revealing a deeper truth about the universe and the human condition as a stepping stone to enlightenment. Such tales are, by their nature, calming – intended to quiet the mind and induce a meditative state.

What Lies Between applies the methodology of the kōan to its narrative structure, but with the opposite emotional affect. An anxiety-inducing eighty five minutes leaves its audience with more questions than it answers, churning up kernels of insight into the nature of memory, identity, relationships, time, creativity and sanity.

Our protagonist, Jim, played by Daniel Betty, decamps to a remote rural location to focus on his work. What seems at first ideal – long days bookended by coffee and wine spent writing and reading, walking and contemplating, eating and dozing – quickly degenerates as his self care devolves, his appearance and domestic surrounds becoming disheveled as he fills and refills his glass of red from a seemingly endlessly replenishing supply.

Like the aspiring Zen master, Jim is chasing enlightenment, striving to piece together a narrative from half remembered scenes, dreams and visions. He sleeps often, sometimes in his thin city shoes. He wakes, confused. He eats tethered to his laptop, in thrall to his work. Breadcrumbs of story are scattered through repetitive scenes that lay bare the grind that creativity can be. There is a dialogue between the snippets of memory, a woman and child walking away, scribbled notes and voice notes and found photos, the ominous looming figure observing him from afar. We feel Jim’s frustration because it is our own.

Enter Jess, the neighbour, played by Ruth Strong, unusually curious about Jim’s doings. With fresh vegetables, coffee and dinner offers, she attempts to care for him despite his reluctance to accept. “It’s nice to be away from the world,” she says, “but you risk getting left behind.” Ultimately, her efforts to support him in his quest, result in her own needs being neglected – something undoubtedly familiar to those in relationship with creatives whose work demands sacrifice.

The film is unbound by any linear notion of time, the glitches in continuity adding to the heightened sense of confusion and concern for Jim’s sanity, and perhaps our own. That he pulls a photograph from a well thumbed volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is no coincidence. The novel’s meditation on the fickleness of memory, the impossibility of a truly accurate recollection of the past, emerges as a theme. Jim makes and breaks promises. “Time slips away,” he says on the phone to an agent who may or may not even be there – his discarded device shows no signal.

The dialogue is sparse and understated – a full fifteen minutes passes before anyone utters a word – allowing space for masterful visual storytelling that starts with familiar cinematic shorthand before breaking down, dissipating lucidity in homeopathic concentration. The exquisitely unnerving original score underpins the feeling and meaning, adding exponentially to the sense of strain. The acting is pared back and brimming with tension, volumes filled with the things left unsaid but expressed in the hunch of a shoulder, the furrow of a brow. Mirrored actions build on each other – peering through windows with cupped hands, the characters separated by much more than glass.

The crescendo, when it comes, is, by design, unsatisfying. We are left with a bleak sense of futility, that all the pain, the effort, was for nothing – that this is just one cycle in an endless karmic rotation that may never bear fruit. It’s a feeling deeply familiar to any creative who has struggled to birth a work, and to their loved ones who try to support them.

However, the very existence of this film, the immense effort incurred by a motivated team of creatives to turn the spark of inspiration to something tangible projected in technicolour and surround sound, is proof that there is release from the cycle of suffering, that creative nirvana can indeed be achieved.