Looking for Eric (***)

If you’ve seen other films by the British director Ken Loach, you don’t expect him to make something whose plot reminds you of Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam. Loach is the director of realist dramas like the The Wind That Shakes the Barley, about the Irish War of Independence, Sweet Sixteen, about a Scottish teen trying not to follow his mom to jail, and Bread and Roses, about the plight of Mexican office cleaners trying to unionize in Los Angeles. Allen’s film had him getting romantic advice from the ghost of Humphrey Bogart. Or at least the movie version of Humphrey Bogart. There are two Erics in this movie; one, a football (soccer)-loving postman (Steve Evets), idolizes the other, former Manchester United superstar Eric Cantona, an occasional actor (Elizabeth) who plays himself. Cantona, the character, is not a ghost, but an imagined presence who functions the same way. His function is to give courage to postman Eric, who is panicking at the thought of having to face the ex-wife he betrayed long ago.

The movie is more or less a comedy, but it still a Loach film and not actually much like a Woody Allen film. Or, at times, a comedy. For one thing, Loach worked with the same screenwriter, Paul Laverty, as on his other recent work. And Cantona’s role, though obviously tailored to the plot of the movie, is less stylized than the movie-star version of Bogart who coaches Allen. It’s the celebrity as regular guy, rather than a movie star, who’s giving advice. Finally, while some of the interplay of postman Eric and his working-class buddies, and some of the now-in-French, now-in-English advice of the football star garners a few laughs, a good deal of the film would fit right into Loach’s dramas. (Aside from the French, some dialogue may be tough for American ears to follow.) In what amounts to a third of the movie, Cantona is absent. His earlier presences seems like a gimmick glommed onto what should have been a straight family drama. But the ending brings the dramatic and comedic elements together in a way that more or less justifies the concept. This is not the best of Loach’s movies. The other, more overtly political ones, make a stronger artistic statement. But it shows some versatility.

IMDB link

viewed 4/10/10 at Prince [Philadelphia Spring Preview] and reviewed 4/?/10