Sometime Always Never. (15.)
Directed by Carl Hunter.
Starring Bill Nighy, Sam Riley, Alice Lowe, Jenny Agutter, Louis Healy and Tim McInnerny. 89 mins.
An unclassifiable mediation on scrabble, tailoring, cheap substitutes, ice cream van decoration and loss, this is a British film not like the others. Within five minutes, as father and son Nighy and Riley are shown driving along against an obviously fake back-projected landscape, it clicks that what we have here is a British equivalent of a Wes Anderson film. It has that very precise visual style, perfect lighting, everything in its place and characterisations that are, for want of a better word, quirky/ far-out/ offbeat/ way-out. It's Wanderson, but not so arch or stylised as to be detached/ separated/ adrift from reality.
It's also distinctive in being a film about a sport or hobby, scrabble, which isn't building up towards a competition. The story is rooted in a father and son reconnecting. Nighy is a tailor who believes in the highest quality for his suits but is happy to make do with cheap imitation for everything else: Pickwick top twenty albums rather than the actual artists. Riley is the son that works painting and writing jingles for ice cream vans. Between them is the other son, the one that walked out years ago over a game of Scrabble (or Scribble, the cheap alternative) and has never been heard of again.
Director Hunter, formerly bass player in 90s two hit wonders The Farm, and scriptwriter Frank Cotterel Boyce (resume: some cracking scripts for Michael Winterbottom and Danny Boyle and a couple of duffers for Doctor Who) have conjured up that rare British film that seems to embue this country with magic rather than suck it from it. It also draws uniformly splendid performances from the cast. It a lovely chamber piece of melancholy twee, genuinely moving but restrained, a film that knows the heart is best kept up your sleeve, rather than worn on it.
Directed by Carl Hunter.
Starring Bill Nighy, Sam Riley, Alice Lowe, Jenny Agutter, Louis Healy and Tim McInnerny. 89 mins.
An unclassifiable mediation on scrabble, tailoring, cheap substitutes, ice cream van decoration and loss, this is a British film not like the others. Within five minutes, as father and son Nighy and Riley are shown driving along against an obviously fake back-projected landscape, it clicks that what we have here is a British equivalent of a Wes Anderson film. It has that very precise visual style, perfect lighting, everything in its place and characterisations that are, for want of a better word, quirky/ far-out/ offbeat/ way-out. It's Wanderson, but not so arch or stylised as to be detached/ separated/ adrift from reality.
It's also distinctive in being a film about a sport or hobby, scrabble, which isn't building up towards a competition. The story is rooted in a father and son reconnecting. Nighy is a tailor who believes in the highest quality for his suits but is happy to make do with cheap imitation for everything else: Pickwick top twenty albums rather than the actual artists. Riley is the son that works painting and writing jingles for ice cream vans. Between them is the other son, the one that walked out years ago over a game of Scrabble (or Scribble, the cheap alternative) and has never been heard of again.
Director Hunter, formerly bass player in 90s two hit wonders The Farm, and scriptwriter Frank Cotterel Boyce (resume: some cracking scripts for Michael Winterbottom and Danny Boyle and a couple of duffers for Doctor Who) have conjured up that rare British film that seems to embue this country with magic rather than suck it from it. It also draws uniformly splendid performances from the cast. It a lovely chamber piece of melancholy twee, genuinely moving but restrained, a film that knows the heart is best kept up your sleeve, rather than worn on it.
