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Culture Film Young Adam

Not bonny - but plenty of Clyde Share 0 There are murky waters and misery for Ewan McGregor in this

powerful Scottish thriller 0

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Philip French Email The Observer, Sunday 28 September 2003 02.34 BST

Article history

For a while, there was a feeling that comedy was becoming the dominant form of Scottish cinema - starting with the genial humour of Bill Forsyth in Film the early 1980s, continuing in the 1990s with the darker laughter of the Tilda Swinton team that made Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, and accompanied along the way by the cheerful Caledonian presence of Billy Connolly. Culture More reviews Young Adam Then came Lynne Ramsey with Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar, depicting the moral and Production year: 2003 Countries: France, UK physical squalor of Scottish working-class life. Related Cert (UK): 18 Now, following The Last Great Wilderness, the 23 Oct 2011 Runtime: 98 mins curious thriller with which he made his We Need to Talk About Directors: David directorial debut, David Mackenzie has adapted Kevin – review MacKenzie Young Adam, the bleak novel that Scottish beat Cast: Emily Mortimer, 2 Oct 2011 Ewan McGregor, Peter author Alexander Trocchi wrote in 1954. Lynne Ramsay: 'Just talk Mullan, Tilda Swinton to me straight' More on this film The film is a kind of psychological thriller set in and around Glasgow in the early 1950s, a time 4 May 2011 Edinburgh film festival of high employment and low wages. From the announces initial lineup opening shots that give the landscape a cold, blue-tinged look and the plaintive David Byrne music that accompanies them, Young Adam 11 Apr 2010 I Am Love catches the sad, desperate feeling of the times.

It begins with the body of a young woman floating in the murky waters of the Clyde and fished out by two bargees, Les (Peter Mullan) and Joe (Ewan McGregor). Les is middle-aged, married to the resentful Ella and Today's best video living with their seven-year-old son on a barge she owns called Atlantic Eve. Joe - handsome, taciturn, in his late 20s - lives with them, assisting Les in loading and unloading the cargoes they carry along the canals.

Theirs is an unromantic life of hard work and tedium, relieved by bouts of drinking. The dissatisfied Ella becomes Joe's passionate lover. In fact, without over-exerting himself, he also becomes the lover of another married woman and a widow, though he brings little in the way of affection or tenderness to his couplings. It almost seems that the women are punishing themselves for their carnality by having sex under the most miserable and dangerous conditions.

The newspapers record the story of the drowned girl; she's identified as Notting Hill Carnival: East London dance group prepares for parade - video

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/sep/28/philipfrench[25/08/2013 12:47:53] Not bonny - but plenty of Clyde | Film | The Observer

Cathie (Emily Mortimer), a Glasgow office worker, and the police believe As Notting Hill Carnival approaches, the Heritage she is a murder victim. Headlines announce the arrest of her married social arts and dance group in Bethnal Green boyfriend, a matter that becomes an obsessive subject in the pubs and practices for their procession performance streets of Clydeside. Louisiana sinkhole Gradually, we learn by observing Joe's reactions and through a series of swallows up trees memories he has that Cathie was his lover and that he feels responsible Footage shows tall trees sinking into for her accidental death. His finding her was coincidence certainly, but underwater cavern at also destiny. Bayou Corne in Louisiana Trocchi's novel and this film have been compared with Camus' L'étranger and Joe has been seen as some existential antihero, an ambitious How bees make honey would-be writer drifting around, angry and ineffectual after pitching his – video Watch beekeeper typewriter into the Clyde in a moment of despair. Becky Chadd realease her bees in the New The proper comparisons, it seems to me, are with the novels of Emile Forest and explain the Zola, the French cinema of the 1930s and American movies of the many intricate talents of the much-loved honey bee postwar years. In Young Adam, we find Zola's sense of doom, the way his characters are trapped by fate, family and a malevolent society. The Military hovercraft ploughs into beach barge setting brings to mind the more lyrical L'Atalante of Jean Vigo and Kaliningrad sunbathers there are close resemblances to Renoir's 1938 version of Zola's La Bête witness Russian military humaine and Fritz Lang's Hollywood adaptation of the same novel, vessel land on a busy Human Desire. beach

Young Adam is a cleverly constructed film that holds the attention throughout its economical 95 minutes. The naturalistic acting has considerable power, with Tilda Swinton giving a characteristically un-self- regarding performance and Ewan McGregor steering clear of easy charm. But it is a depressing film exuding hopelessness and inviting us to pity the characters rather than share in their tragic condition.

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