Cashback (15)

This youth oriented film, which general audiences should enjoy too, has been developed out of a short the director made a few years ago.   It has a delightful gentle charm and while drawing on various existing genres - romantic comedy, youth movie, coming of age movie etc, - Ellis has written and directed it in a style, which is refreshingly different, original and very much his own.  

When art student Ben (Biggerstaff) is dumped by his girlfriend, he finds himself suffering from insomnia.   To while away the night hours he takes a job on the overnight shift at his local Sainsbury's, where he meets an oddball collection of fellow workers and finds artistic inspiration by imagining he can freeze time. While the world is on freeze, he philosophises on love, life and the beauty of the female form.   He also forms a relationship with check out girl Sharon (Fox), though finds himself in competition with the oafish store manager Matt (Michael Lambourne) for her attention.  

One of the things that makes this film different is it's shooting style right from the opening scene of the break up, which has Ben's about to be ex Suzy (Michelle Ryan) yelling mutely into the camera, while Ben ruminates on the situation in voice over.There's a lot of voice over from Ben in this - not normally seen as a popular device - but in this film it works because it's beautifully written and takes us effectively into his decidedly unusual mind and way of looking at the world.   Another particularly striking shot is the first time we meet fellow worker Brian (Marc Pickering), a kung fu wannabe caught in full pose in the supermarket aisle. The freezing of time is intriguing and whoever did Ben's drawings of the pretty girls he draws, while they are "frozen", appears to be a pretty talented artist.  

The characters are quirky and interesting with the supermarket staff all entertainingly eccentric in their techniques to alleviate the boredom of the job. Biggerstaff is a nice looking young man with lovely melancholic eyes and is very sympathetic as Ben. Fox is likeable and convincing as a real "ordinary" girl as opposed to the more conventionally glamorous Suzy and Higgins as Ben's best mate in the supermarket has a nice cheeky chappie air to him. The flashback scenes evoking Ben's childhood are effective and the young actor, Frank Hesketh, who plays him looks like he could grow up to be Ben. The sexy bits, of which there are quite a few, are charming and funny rather than salacious. The pace starts to drag in places in the last half hour, when Matt organises the staff into a five a side football match against another supermarket but that's a small quibble. Sainsbury's appear to have co-operated on this one as well as the original short, so presumably they were unoffended by its not exactly flattering view of life working in a supermarket. Or maybe they thought it was worth it for the product placement.