Initially, I was a little disappointed not to make the cut for the “closing night” (held two days before the technical actual closing date) screening of A SINGLE MAN. I was also surprised…are people that enthused for A SINGLE MAN? More so than the stuff at the other galas that I did get into? I’m not even that enthused, I just know that I’m more or less obliged to see all the major awards-bait, and it is one. But really, all I’ve heard about the movie, plot-wise, is “Colin Firth plays a gay guy, in a drama set during the Cuban Missile Crisis era.” Not super-exciting, since as far as I can tell, the Cuban Missile Crisis is a backdrop rather than a plot point. But obviously exciting enough that it filled up. I could probably have hit the rush line and gotten in, but then I looked at the catalogue, and saw that a new Ken Loach film was playing at the same time.
Now, I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever seen an entire Ken Loach film all the way through, but I like the IDEA of him. I know, I know, bad critic, but look, it isn’t possible to see every movie ever made, and I’m sure I see more than you, unless your name is Foundas or Koehler. I got taken to task for not being up on my French New Wave the other day, but what can I tellya? I have a bit of an aversion to French stuff. Germany has always seemed more exciting – sexier language and women, yes, really; plus I’d rather eat a big beer-marinated sausage than anything soaked in butter.
I do love my part-French relatives, however. This is not about them. And AMELIE is great. I just never feel like sitting down to watch French dramas. French horror, yes. But every year there’s some movie that comes out that every critic seems to like just because it’s in French, when I’m SURE that the same movie in English would be derided. A CHRISTMAS TALE, for example.
So that’s a weird stupid tangent, and anyway when I think about it I have liked a lot of French movies. I think maybe I just don’t like the idea of them…the same way I DO like the idea of Ken Loach, who seems a bit like Mike Leigh with thicker accents and more violence.
But this time, with LOOKING FOR ERIC, Loach has actually made a feel-good movie.
It’s not a total 180 – there is still working-class despair, and a fair share of violence, some of it related to football and guns. But it leaves you with a smile on your face, for the right reasons. And fans of the game of soccer will like it even more than I did.
(Though I’m pretty okay with soccer as a sport, because it always keeps moving and they don’t stop the game every few minutes for TV commercials. Therefore matches generally end when they’re supposed to.)
The movie is the story of a postman named Eric (Steve Evets), who has an emotional breakdown and starts driving the wrong way on a roundabout till he crashes. A roundabout, by the way, is not a carousel ride in this context; a roundabout is a hellish traffic-routing thing that the UK highway authorities dreamt up in order to make LA traffic look sane by comparison – imagine a road going in a circle, that’s like a mini-freeway eating itself. On-ramps and off-ramps feed into and out of this rotation, and the Brits think this is way better than a four-way stop-sign intersection. Maybe, if you’re crazy. I fear UK driving more than ANYTHING in Southern California.
Also in the UK, you can only pass slower traffic on one side when you’re on the motorway. They like that sort of order. It would make me nuts. And I’m not really surprised that Eric crashes at the beginning of the movie.
The crash causes him to reconnect with his daughter, and her baby; in becoming an occasional babysitter for her, he reconnects with his estranged ex in the process, though it’s still complicated. Meanwhile, Eric’s two teenage sons (one of whom is black, with no explanation; sign o’ the times) are getting harder and harder to deal with, as the eldest (not the black one) has become involved with a local criminal.
Helping Eric sort all this stuff out is his favorite soccer player of all time, Manchester United’s Eric Cantona (who is actually French), playing himself, who comes to Eric in hallucinations to help guide him through life’s little pitfalls with sage sports metaphors. It’s a nice bit of stunt-casting that works well…I’d be curious whether or not Cantona was the first choice for the character. But fans will be happy, and I don’t know if Man-United haters will be able to take it, though the finale suggests that even rival clubs can come together when a greater external threat arises.
Wow. I just realized that the main character is named Eric, and so is his hero. That’s fucking deep, man. The title of the movie now has a double meaning. I know this may sound sarcastic, but I seriously did not realize while watching it that the main character and his idol were both “Eric.” Testament to something?
Whatevs. As I said, you’ll leave with a smile on your face.
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