Hit Brit Flick

‘JUST hearing the words “British cinema” sends a shiver down the spine. You think of boring films, small films with small issues, small characters set in small, claustrophobic plots.

‘It must be time for me to take my clothes off by now’

There’s all that humour in the face of adversity to stick in the gizzard. Life might be awful but so long as we have each other we can manage. Nowt as queer as folk. Roll aht the barrel. Yous alreett, our kid?

And then there comes along a film like Young Adam. Here’s a movie that looks like a proper adult film. No-one takes their clothes off for anything other than a bath or sex. Men don’t learn to play in a brass band or dance. The bored housewife doesn’t look for love in foreign climate. No-one takes drugs and goes raving.

David Mackenzie’s take on a novel by Scottish beat author Alexander Trocchi is an engaging if occasionally elusive tale of sexual tension and guilt.

The action centres on Joe as he works a barge around Glasgow. The brooding Joe (Ewan McGregor) works with Les (Peter Mullan) and Les’ wife Ella (Tilda Swinton). The routine unromantic calm is broken by the discovery of a body floating in the water.

It’s clear that Joe knows more than he’s letting on.

As good as McGregor’s performance is, the show is stolen by Swinton’s barge owner. Remarkably plain and fierce, she exerts a power over both men. Swinton is riveting, an engaging screen star.

Any more films like this and British cinema might mean more than unemployed men stripping for pleasure…’

Posted: 30th, September 2003 | In: Celebrities Comment | TrackBack | Permalink