British social realism with an elliptical and poetic European sensibility
British TV drama, shaped by the demands of the half-hour soap opera, is simultaneously tawdry and melodramatic. It is a place in which underdeveloped, stereotypical characters stumble their way through repetitive, overcooked story lines, and indulge on an almost weekly basis in overacted, breast-beating histrionics. This is drama boiled right down to a series of clashes and confrontations, a chain of Big Dramatic Scenes, with no space between them. There is never any sense of the day-to-day, normal lives of characters, the moments when they are not caught up in the middle of some major event, trauma, or emotional upheaval.A BOY CALLED DAD takes a similarly heightened approach to narrative, but the effect is worlds away from the cheap sensationalism of early evening soap opera. True, considered in isolation, the film's plot various plot elements might seem as melodramatic as those of any issue-led soap: a fourteen-year-old boy, Robbie, impregnates a class-mate, who rejects him in favour of a petty hoodlum, who ill-treats the child: by an improbably coincidence, the boy is reunited with his own estranged father, an affable but unreliable wastrel, who eventually lets him down; a confrontation with the hoodlum boyfriend of his classmate results in the boy shooting the hoodlum and absconding with the baby; on the run, he finds himself in Wales, where he befriends a young woman who has been traumatised by childhood sexual abuse. The film might thus seem like a chain of improbable incidents and actions which exist solely to set up the scenario through which certain issues may be explored.
But to offer such a bare synopsis is to ignore director Brian Percival's approach to such generic-seeming material. Opting for a lyrical, elliptical style, influenced as much by European filmmakers such as Bresson or the Dardenne Brothers, as by the usual suspects of British Social realism, Percival minimises melodrama in favour of something rather more meditative. This is a lean, spare film, which focuses on location as much as it does on character; offsetting tense, twitchy hand-held close-ups of the characters' faces with smooth, tracking long shots as they move through the film's varying urban and rural landscapes. The effect is both to anchor the drama in a wider world, and also to provide sufficient space and quiet time to offset the story's noisier dramatic flourishes, which are themselves often consciously underplayed. The film often presents its key moments of confrontation and revelation partially off screen, or in silence, focusing on face and body language rather than resorting to the habitual expository, explanatory dialogue and mannered shouting of British TV drama. Performances are low-key and naturalistic, and Kyle Ward is remarkable, both in his scenes with the always excellent Ian Hart, and also in those with the baby, which convey all of the anxieties and joys of fatherhood.
Sure, there are flaws, where the British inclination for melodrama and soap operatics threaten to take hold. The moment in which the hoodlum boyfriend, little more than a cockney accented cipher from a Danny Dyer flick, produces a gun to see off the 13 year old protagonist is faintly absurd. A knife would have been sufficient and more plausible in the circumstances. The entire mid section, in which the protagonist finds himself on a farm in Wales and befriends a lonely, troubled young woman could easily be viewed as a digression; a misjudged homage to WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, which also finds time to deal with that currently most over-used of dramatic clichés, child abuse. But it could equally be argued that the whole film is actually about the iniquities of parents upon their children; the damage wrought by cruelty, neglect, or denial. Here it is not the girl's father who is the abuser but her father's brother - and the estrangement that exists between father and daughter is due to the fact that neither has been able to deal with the fact. This is ultimately a film which shows parents and children trying to cope with the consequences of their actions, to face up to truths they have tried to bury, and to rebuild their relationships. Narratively, the sequence might seem digressive, but thematically it is right on target, and it moves the protagonist forward on his journey to responsibility. The final emotional confrontation between father and son has its origins in the shouty moments of confrontation and closure that characterise soap opera, but the scene must be offset against the understated way in which we discover the cruel irony that Robbie's memory of the last good holiday he had with his parents is actually the moment his parents split up. And the final confrontation itself unleashes not a tirade of recrimination from Robbie against his all-too-fallible father, merely the weary exhortation to "do something".
All in all, this is a visually striking and emotionally powerful little film, filled with wry humour, pathos, and genuine tenderness. Its faults may be attributed perhaps to growing pains, as it attempts to shift British cinema away from the soap operatic take on social realism that characterises most attempts at "serious" film drama in the UK, and reaches towards something quieter, more contemplative, less prescriptive in the impressions it wishes to create in the audience. A bold move in the right direction.
score 7/10
stevebalshaw 16 July 2009
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2096804/34965
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