The Selfish Giant (***1/4) [screening]

The friendship between two kids, called Arbor (Conner Chapman) and Swifty (Shaun Thomas), in working-class Bradford, in northern England, is at the center of this drama. With a prescription he only sometimes takes and that only somewhat calms him down, Arbor is what could be called a bad influence. As we are introduced to him, he’s a foul-mouthed 13- or 14-year-old who mouths off to his teachers. He’d rather be stealing metal and selling it for scrap. Swifty is his bigger, but gentler friend. The movie starts out all murky and chaotic, Arbor yelling at his brother, the two boys stealing wire for scrap — on a borrowed horse — then dealing with the unfriendly scrapyard boss, Arbor yelling at his mom, Swifty’s father yelling, the boys playing at wrestling each other. The story focuses more around midway, and it then becomes a surprising, almost sweet, tale, though never suggestive of its fairy-tale title, borrowed from an Oscar Wilde fable.

The subjects of the film and the non-romanticized portraits of them are reminiscent of Ken Loach films like Sweet Sixteen, but whereas Loach tends to highlight the desperation of his characters, suggesting implied messages about class and the unfairness of life, writer-director Clio Barnard keeps her characters in a world that seems more self-contained, though no less keenly observed. Presumably the scrapyard owner, presumably the selfish giant, is making good money, but he is of the same class. They live in a pitiless world, and pity was not my reaction to them or the other characters. I was not surprised that the two boys, neither an established actor, were from the same background as the characters. They’re quite convincing, and I had trouble imagining a posh kid from London mastering the unfamiliar accents (English, but very helpfully subtitled) and profanity-laced slang (“divs” was one insult I remember) that peppers the dialogue. Barnard’s previous film, The Arbor was a documentary about a playwright from the area in which this was filmed.  She seems to have absorbed the setting, and the scrub country and council houses and scrapyards provide enough visual imagery so as to be almost as memorable as the human characters.



IMDb link

viewed 10/23/13 7:25 pm at Rtiz East [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and posted 10/24/13

The Trip (**3/4)

There should be a name for the modestly burgeoning subgenre of film/movie wherein the stars play fictionalized versions of themselves with the same names. My Dinner with Andre did this 30 years ago. Neil Patrick Harris did it in the Harold and Kumar movies. Larry David does it in his HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm. Maybe combine all of those (well, not so much Harold and Kumar) and you roughly get The Trip, wherein British TV stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon riff on whatever comes into their heads, especially imitating celebrity voices, as they motor around and overnight in the inns of northern England.

Also, they look at some nice scenery and eat some nice nouvelle cuisine, frequently cut in geometric shapes. They regard the fine food with near detachment, making the loving attention the camera pays to it an ironic contrast. How closely this parallels the real Coogan I don’t know, but there is a somewhat serious side in which Coogan weighs the possibilities of the United States, where a larger market and an American girlfriend beckon. I suspect the film might have worked slightly better in its original form as a six-part television series. In long form the minimal plot makes the movie seem long, but it’s often enough amusing, at least if the notion of 40ish Englishmen bickering in the voice of Michael Caine about which of them has the better Caine imitation amuses you. It also offers a perspective on adult male friendship that’s different from that of a typical buddy film, perhaps because these are such distinct personalities.

IMDB link

viewed 6/14/11 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 6/17/11