Dir. Baillie Walsh, UK, 2008, 114 mins
Cast: Daniel Craig, Harry Eden, Olivia Williams
Review by Carol Allen
Music video director Walsh's feature film debut directing his own screenplay is an odd mixture of styles. The story begins in Malibu, where washed up film star Joe Scott (Craig) is living a life of decadence and debauchery awash with drugs, booze and hookers. When he gets a phone call from his mother Grace (Williams) in England to tell him his childhood best friend Boots has died and on the same day is dumped by his agent (Mark Strong), Joe retreats into a long golden flashback about his teenage years in an English seaside village in the seventies, returning to adult Joe for the third act, when he goes home to a more realistic looking England to pick up the unfinished business he ran away from as a boy.
There are a lot of good things about this film, one of which is its cast. Craig, who was instrumental in getting the film made, is suitably wrecked and unhappy and former child actor Eden, so good as the young hero of Pure and as Polanski's Artful Dodger, has grown up into a handsome young man. As the teenage Joe he handles his scenes of sexual initiation by bored housewife Evelyn (Jodhi May) with both sensitivity and confidence. There is an effective supporting performance from veteran Miriam Karlin as the family's garrulous neighbour and Felicity Jones also makes an impact as Ruth, the girl Joe really wants, who is a little fashion plate of strong character with an apparently encyclopedic knowledge of the pop culture of her time. And there's a brilliant little cameo from Emilia Fox in the Hollywood section playing Joe's drug dealer, who reminds one of the Avon lady making a house call.
The long middle section, which contains the meat of the story, looks beautiful and has a strong air of nostalgia, heavily and affectionately laced as it is with the music of the period from Roxy Music, David Bowie and Scot Walker's version of Brel's "Fils De..." - "Sons of...", which appears to be the theme for Joe's friendship with Boots (Max Deacon). But it doesn't seem grounded in any strong reality. This part of the film was shot in South Africa, where Baillie attempted to recreate the Clacton-on-Sea village of his own childhood. But the fragile looking chalet type houses overlooking a magnificent beach look more as though they belong in New Zealand than Essex, while the characters themselves have a curious lack of background. What happened to Joe's father? Why is Evelyn so unhappy in her marriage that she is driven to seduce a fifteen year old? Are Grace and her companion, the somewhat masculine Aunt Peggy (Helen McCrory), relatives or partners? While Boots and Ruth seem to have no reality of their own outside of their role in Joe's life. There is also little in young Joe to indicate what it was in his character that turned him into adult Joe. The two Joes and indeed the apparently more grounded adult Joe, who returns to England, seem to almost come from different movies. Even the tragic accident, which drives young Joe away from home and out into the world, while a devastating shock, is still an unconvincing device for its period, which detracts from its emotional impact.
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