Catch Me Daddy (18.)
Directed by Daniel and Matthew Wolfe.
Starring Sameena Jabeen Ahmed, Conor McCarron, Gary Lewis, Anwar Hussain, Barry Nunney, Shabaz Kaman and Ali Ahmed. 111 mins
A co-production between the BFI and Screen Yorkshire would seem to guarantee two things – arty preciousness and grinding misery. The feature debut of the Bros Wolfe delivers on the grinding misery but I suspect that there is real substance beneath its tricksy, showy surface. The BFI likes to have a coterie of pets directors and one of the tricks for ensuring they take you home from the kennels is to be able to see the world through Andrea Arnold eyes, eyes that can give a poetic visual wonder to bleak landscapes. In the case of Catch Me Daddy we are literally seeing through Andrea Arnold eyes, the cinematographer is Robbie Ryan who lensed all her films (Red Road, Fisk Tank, Wuthering Heights) and gives the Bros Wolfe his visual trademark: the ability to look unflinchingly as this grubby earth and give it a grimy shine. (Or shiny grime, if you prefer.) It is all misty moors and harsh complexions, head lamps on dark country roads and city lights twinkling in the distance.
It begins as an exercise in mobile home emptiness. Two star crossed lovers Laila (Ahmed) and Aaron (McCarron) are living quietly on the peripheries of a northern town. Intercut with this is the build up to a road side assignation between a group of Asians and some white thugs. You imagine maybe a drug deal is going down, but in fact they have been charged with finding Laila and bringing her home to the furious father who she has dishonoured by running away with her Scottish lover.
The cast are a seamlessly integrated mix of actors and real people and the film as a whole achieves a similar balance between real life and the cinematic. It's a western set in shopping malls and motorway cafes. It's a perverse pursuit, trying to get people to come in and pay money to sit and watch people and situations they would actives avoid outside, but the Wolfes pull it off here.
British film makers rejoice in rubbing our faces in it but even that doesn't prepare you for how committedly bleak and sour a vision this is. The remnants of civilisation in a typical post apocalyptic action film are far more refined than the Yorkshire of Catch Me Daddy. The poverty and shallowness of the existence touches everything. It isn't so much the casual, callous violence, it's the wretched food that they eat, which always seems to come from plastic containers. Even the love between our Romeo and Juliet doesn't have any depth or passion to it. It is an infatuation, a curiosity that quickly unwinds when it is challenged. The film ultimately suggest that East is East and West and West and both sides are equally bereft, just a Puffa jacket and a choccy bar milkshake away from barbarism.
Snow in Parardise review
Catch Me Daddy (18.)
Directed by Daniel and Matthew Wolfe.
Starring Sameena Jabeen Ahmed, Conor McCarron, Gary Lewis, Anwar Hussain, Barry Nunney, Shabaz Kaman and Ali Ahmed. 111 mins
A co-production between the BFI and Screen Yorkshire would seem to guarantee two things – arty preciousness and grinding misery. The feature debut of the Bros Wolfe delivers on the grinding misery but I suspect that there is real substance beneath its tricksy, showy surface. The BFI likes to have a coterie of pets directors and one of the tricks for ensuring they take you home from the kennels is to be able to see the world through Andrea Arnold eyes, eyes that can give a poetic visual wonder to bleak landscapes. In the case of Catch Me Daddy we are literally seeing through Andrea Arnold eyes, the cinematographer is Robbie Ryan who lensed all her films (Red Road, Fisk Tank, Wuthering Heights) and gives the Bros Wolfe his visual trademark: the ability to look unflinchingly as this grubby earth and give it a grimy shine. (Or shiny grime, if you prefer.) It is all misty moors and harsh complexions, head lamps on dark country roads and city lights twinkling in the distance.
It begins as an exercise in mobile home emptiness. Two star crossed lovers Laila (Ahmed) and Aaron (McCarron) are living quietly on the peripheries of a northern town. Intercut with this is the build up to a road side assignation between a group of Asians and some white thugs. You imagine maybe a drug deal is going down, but in fact they have been charged with finding Laila and bringing her home to the furious father who she has dishonoured by running away with her Scottish lover.
The cast are a seamlessly integrated mix of actors and real people and the film as a whole achieves a similar balance between real life and the cinematic. It's a western set in shopping malls and motorway cafes. It's a perverse pursuit, trying to get people to come in and pay money to sit and watch people and situations they would actives avoid outside, but the Wolfes pull it off here.
British film makers rejoice in rubbing our faces in it but even that doesn't prepare you for how committedly bleak and sour a vision this is. The remnants of civilisation in a typical post apocalyptic action film are far more refined than the Yorkshire of Catch Me Daddy. The poverty and shallowness of the existence touches everything. It isn't so much the casual, callous violence, it's the wretched food that they eat, which always seems to come from plastic containers. Even the love between our Romeo and Juliet doesn't have any depth or passion to it. It is an infatuation, a curiosity that quickly unwinds when it is challenged. The film ultimately suggest that East is East and West and West and both sides are equally bereft, just a Puffa jacket and a choccy bar milkshake away from barbarism.
Snow in Parardise review
