Young Adam - 2003 film

Young Adam is not an especially well-known film and it doesn't seem to have done particularly well at the box office. Yet it boasts a brilliant cast, including Ewan McGregor as Joe, Tilda Swinton as Ella, who owns a coal barge and is married to grumpy Les (Peter Mullan), and Emily Mortimer. The story is based on a novel by the Scottish author Alexander Trocchi. I'd never heard of Trocchi, I have to confess, but to judge from his Wikipedia entry, he was an unorthodox character, a heroin addict who led a rather troubled life and died in his late 50s.

This is not really a 'crime film' in the orthodox sense, yet the story has a number of attributes that we associate with crime films, including a mysterious death and a murder trial, plus an examination of guilt and conscience. At the start of the film, Joe and Les haul out of the River Clyde the body of a young woman who is only wearing a petticoat. At first the authorities have difficulty in identifying the corpse. Meanwhile,, the barge moves on and Joe turns his attention to Ella, whose marriage is on the rocks. They begin an affair and although Les discovers what is going on, he doesn't do much about it before leaving the couple to their own devices.

Flashbacks give us clues as to what really happened to result in the woman's death in the water. She is Cathy (Emily Mortimer); Joe picked her up on beach and began a relationship with her. She went out to work while he tried and failed to write a novel, but the affair faltered. There is a lot of nudity in this film and several scenes which are controversial, but on the whole I'd say David Mackenzie's direction is subtle rather than exploitative. 

There are various implausibilities, especially as regards the murder trial. I guess neither Trocchi nor Mackenzie felt unduly constrained by the need for factual accuracy, but I think the lack of credibility in some of the details is a weakness. The ending also strikes me as interesting, but artistically unsatisfactory. So it certainly isn't a perfect film, and one thing is for sure: if you're looking for a feelgood movie, this isn't it. But it's quite haunting and the acting is excellent.   

 

We Need to Talk About Kevin

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a 2011 film based on Lionel Shriver’s best-selling book. I still haven’t got round to reading the novel, but I’ve long been intrigued by the way Shriver ‘broke through’ as an author after publishing half a dozen books which made (relatively) little impact. She’s indicated that this isn’t because her best-seller was necessarily a much better book than its predecessors, but rather because her story-line just happened to capture public attention at the right moment. In the first place, the book’s reputation spread by word of mouth, always a powerful recommendation.

The film stars Tilda Swinton, whom I’ve seen in one or two less than engrossing movies over the years. Here, though, she is at her very best, playing the part of Eva, mother of Kevin, who turns into a spree killer. The film charts the troubled relationship between mother and son in an unflinching way, and the switches between past and present are handled much more effectively than is often the way.

Kevin takes pleasure in hurting others, and it becomes increasingly clear that he is capable of inflicting appalling cruelty. His father is complacent, but Eva’s slowly growing horror as she becomes more and more clear about her son’s true nature is skilfully portrayed.

Most people, including me, struggle to understand what motivates a spree killer such as Kevin. We find their mass murders appalling, but it is almost impossible to know for sure how further outrages – the Colorado killings are a recent example – can be prevented. Gun control is a big issue in the US, of course, but even the UK’s post-Dunblane society is not immune from these terrible tragedies, which so often end up with the killer dead as well as his victims, as with the horrific murder spree of Derrick Bird in Cumbria a couple of years ago. This film, and no doubt the book, offers no easy answers, but the portrayal of Kevin and his family background still struck me as insightful, as well as chilling.  

The Deep End

The Deep End is a 2001 movie starring Tilda Swinton which is sometimes described as a re-make of a James Mason film called This Reckless Moment. In fact, both are based on The Blank Wall, a novel by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding.

I haven’t read the book, but I was first alerted to Holding’s qualities as a crime writer by Ed Gorman’s blog, and it turns out that her other admirers included Raymond Chandler and the legendary critic Anthony Boucher. She started out writing romances, with titles including The Invincible Minnie, before turning to novels of suspense, apparently as a way of making more money after the Wall Street Crash. She died in 1955.

As for the movie, I have to say I was underwhelmed. The basic premise is that Tilda plays Margaret Hall, whose son is in a relationship with an unsavoury older man. When the older man dies, and her son is implicated, Margaret tries to cover things up, only to become embroiled in a blackmail scam.

The raw material of the story is strong (the book and the James Mason film were successful) but I did find it difficult to care much for either Margaret Hall or her son, and in a story like this, it is almost always essential to have some form of empathy for the main characters. The production values of the film are high, and the Lake Tahoe area looks attractive, but I am afraid this was a thriller which thrilled me much less than I had hoped. I would, however, be very interested to learn the views of other Holding fans about her best books.