How To Be (15.)
Directed by Oliver Irving.
Starring Robert Pattinson, Rebecca Pidgeon, Powell Jones, Jeremy Hardy, Mike Pearce, Michael Irving. 85 mins.
The curse of overnight success is that everybody goes digging back through the past trying to find some potential product to earn on. Since Twilight hit at Christmas, first Little Ashes and now this very small scale London based quirky comedy, drummed back into cinemas. Pattinson plays Art, a drifting twenty something with pretensions to be a singer-songwriter, who after the break-up of his latest relationship is forced to go back to his parents.
When we see Art perform his very bad songs on stage early on, you may expect some kind of Flight of the Concords type of a deal, but the film isn’t too interested in the music. The crux of the film is his attempts to heal his relationship with his very cold parents, played by Irving and, rather incongruously, by Mrs David Mamet, Pidgeon.
If this were an American film we’d probably be throwing up phrases like slacker or mumblecore but Art and his friends really are just big children, racked with fear and misery and barely any coherent personality. The film is rather awkward and amateurish in places but does have some genuinely funny scenes. Irving is probably a better writer than he is director, his penchant for doing comedy with people’s faces in darkness is an interesting conceit, the merit of which is still up for debate.
I think this might be Pattinson’s best screen performance so far; he keeps you on side with a character who should be pathetic and unlikeable - part Nick Drake part Harry Enfield’s Kevin the Teenager. Maybe he’s the English Keanu, and I don’t mean that as an insult.
How To Be (15.)
Directed by Oliver Irving.
Starring Robert Pattinson, Rebecca Pidgeon, Powell Jones, Jeremy Hardy, Mike Pearce, Michael Irving. 85 mins.
The curse of overnight success is that everybody goes digging back through the past trying to find some potential product to earn on. Since Twilight hit at Christmas, first Little Ashes and now this very small scale London based quirky comedy, drummed back into cinemas. Pattinson plays Art, a drifting twenty something with pretensions to be a singer-songwriter, who after the break-up of his latest relationship is forced to go back to his parents.
When we see Art perform his very bad songs on stage early on, you may expect some kind of Flight of the Concords type of a deal, but the film isn’t too interested in the music. The crux of the film is his attempts to heal his relationship with his very cold parents, played by Irving and, rather incongruously, by Mrs David Mamet, Pidgeon.
If this were an American film we’d probably be throwing up phrases like slacker or mumblecore but Art and his friends really are just big children, racked with fear and misery and barely any coherent personality. The film is rather awkward and amateurish in places but does have some genuinely funny scenes. Irving is probably a better writer than he is director, his penchant for doing comedy with people’s faces in darkness is an interesting conceit, the merit of which is still up for debate.
I think this might be Pattinson’s best screen performance so far; he keeps you on side with a character who should be pathetic and unlikeable - part Nick Drake part Harry Enfield’s Kevin the Teenager. Maybe he’s the English Keanu, and I don’t mean that as an insult.
