More than ten years ago, Jamie Thraves directed The Low Down, a largely respected and acclaimed independent picture that was listed as one of the best British films of the last 25 years. Then Thraves fell off the radar, he could not get funding and he only made one more film, The Cry of the Owl, in Canada which never really saw the light of day. Thraves triumphantly returns with his third feature film, Treacle Jr, out in cinemas this Friday (15th July).
Like The Low Down, this film has at the centre of it a fine leading performance from Aiden Gillen (Queer As Folk, The Wire). Gillen plays Aiden, a man who most people avoid in bars; that guy who latches on to anything in conversation just so he is talking to somebody. And wearing his trucker baseball cap and rucksack, he always has some quick business scheme on his brain and overactive imagination.
However, Thraves script does not begin with Aiden but rather Tom (Tom Fisher), a happily married man with a young baby daughter in Birmingham who instead of going to work one morning, gets on a train to London. After sleeping rough a few nights and getting beat up, he first encounters Aiden at the A&E department of a local hospital. Aiden hooks onto Tom, and try as Tom might to untie himself from his clutches, they become firmly attached.
Much like Sally Hawkins' Polly in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, Aiden's sheer exuberance and effervescence can at times be infuriating, but due to Gillen's sympathetic portrayal and the Aiden's journey in the narrative - we see him get beaten up, he has a girlfriend who uses him for her own means. Cleverly, the film uses Tom as a conduit so we see Aiden through his eyes, and how slowly the tendernesss of Aiden comes to the surface helped by the use of a cat as a surrogate child.
The double act and unlikely friendship between two very different men, harks back to Midnight Cowboy and Thraves himself says he thought of it more like Shrek and Donkey; but the close bondness and Thraves undying admiration for these characters helps in the depiction of London at the street level with the help of some low-key but insightful observational humour.
Independent by definition, self-funded by Thraves and his close family for a budget of close to £30,000 it makes you wonder how good a film he could do with a sufficient budget, after drawing stellar performances from all the cast and making a film that is evocative and original. It is all the more remarkable and worrying, that a genuine talent and refreshing voice of British cinema has been kept quiet for so long.
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