Angelika Film Centre, July 2, 2011
Movie #40 for 2011
What an odd little film. Interesting, unsettling, and ultimately, I think, quite good.
Oliver Tate (CRAIG ROBERTS) lives in a Welsh seaside town and is coming of age. He’s a quirky kid, smart and calculating. He wants to be popular and have a girlfriend (namely Jordana Bevan, played by YASMIN PAIGE, pictured with Roberts) but is uneasy with things like bullying that he keenly observes as vital to getting there. His mum (SALY HAWKINS, Happy-go-lucky) and dad (NOAH TAYLOR, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, He Died With a Falafel in his Hand) are stuck in a rut and the charismatic motivational-speaking-psychic next door (PADDY CONSIDINE, Hot Fuzz, A Room For Romeo Brass) is not helping.
RICHARD AYOADE (from The IT Crowd) directed his own adaptation of the 2008 novel (which I am about half-way through reading), and made some really interesting choices. He transplanted the story about 20 years (and used a nostalgic wash of the film to evocative effect), characters are remarkably different and most of the action in the film never happens in the book. Almost nothing is the same except for a few details and a few lines - although even they are given a completely different context.
Despite this, it is still somehow a good adaptation - it is true to the feeling of the book, if not to its particulars. It helps that it is also a good film.
All actors are solid, especially the polite but frustrated SALLY HAWKINS and sad-sack NOAH TAYLOR who have an excellent dynamic. I feel like I need to mention the editing too, and how the smash cuts and harsh edits contribute to a very effective sense of teenage unease that the book also drenched in.
It could have all gone horribly wrong - a quirky coming of age film loosely adapted from the strange debut novel of a 22 year old “literary genius” - but Ayoade clearly knows what he’s doing and, luckily for me, I kind of dig it.
