The Selfish Giant (15.)
Directed by Clio Bernard.
Starring Conner Chapman, Shaun Thomas, Sean Gilder, Lorraine Ashbourne Siobhan Finneran and Steve Evets. 91 mins
Clio Barnard’s first feature, The Arbor, was a unique and revelatory new form of documentary in which actors lip-synched real people’s testimony and memories. It was fantastically innovative but exceedingly grim. Her follow up is a much more conventional effort, an exemplary example of the the old British standard: the Ken Loach film about children. It is equally grim.
Arbor (Chapman) and Swifty (Thomas) are two lost boys trying to make their way through the harsh and desolate life in Bradford. Arbor is the latest of that long line of gobby little scrotes who have anchored British movies. He’s a little more feral than most, his ADHD makes him almost uncontrollable. Swifty though is the archetypal soft lad, a round faced dreamer with a sensitivity towards and understanding of horses.
After being excluded from school the pair turn towards scrapping, collecting scrap metal which they trade with the unscrupulous trader Kitten (Gilder.) A potential escape route is offered by trotting pony that is Kitten’s pride and joy and that he might need Swifty jockey for him in one of the illegal early morning road races. The immediately reality is the two of them scraping by in the semi-legal pursuit of bits of scrape. (This is not a film for anyone who got stuck for hours on South West Train out of Waterloo because someone had nicked all the railway cable.)
Bernard shares a number of visual motifs with Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank: lots of horses stuck in rain sodden films next to hissing electricity pylons. Everything takes place beneath a low ceiling of dark clouds but it is all beautifully shot. It’s grey but vibrantly grey; it’s grim reality, but taken from its best angle. It teeters on the edge of parodic bleakness but what it works because it has the simple compelling wonder of a good children’s story.
Directed by Clio Bernard.
Starring Conner Chapman, Shaun Thomas, Sean Gilder, Lorraine Ashbourne Siobhan Finneran and Steve Evets. 91 mins
Clio Barnard’s first feature, The Arbor, was a unique and revelatory new form of documentary in which actors lip-synched real people’s testimony and memories. It was fantastically innovative but exceedingly grim. Her follow up is a much more conventional effort, an exemplary example of the the old British standard: the Ken Loach film about children. It is equally grim.
Arbor (Chapman) and Swifty (Thomas) are two lost boys trying to make their way through the harsh and desolate life in Bradford. Arbor is the latest of that long line of gobby little scrotes who have anchored British movies. He’s a little more feral than most, his ADHD makes him almost uncontrollable. Swifty though is the archetypal soft lad, a round faced dreamer with a sensitivity towards and understanding of horses.
After being excluded from school the pair turn towards scrapping, collecting scrap metal which they trade with the unscrupulous trader Kitten (Gilder.) A potential escape route is offered by trotting pony that is Kitten’s pride and joy and that he might need Swifty jockey for him in one of the illegal early morning road races. The immediately reality is the two of them scraping by in the semi-legal pursuit of bits of scrape. (This is not a film for anyone who got stuck for hours on South West Train out of Waterloo because someone had nicked all the railway cable.)
Bernard shares a number of visual motifs with Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank: lots of horses stuck in rain sodden films next to hissing electricity pylons. Everything takes place beneath a low ceiling of dark clouds but it is all beautifully shot. It’s grey but vibrantly grey; it’s grim reality, but taken from its best angle. It teeters on the edge of parodic bleakness but what it works because it has the simple compelling wonder of a good children’s story.
