Neil Young's Film Lounge

Neil Young’s Film Lounge – Breaking Away

BREAKING AWAY

7/10

USA 1979, dir. Peter Yates, 101m

Breezily enjoyable, refreshingly optimistic version of what is known in Britain as ‘town vs gown’, the conflict between well-heeled university students and the young working-class locals whose noses they so often put out of joint. But writer Steve Tesich takes the material into unexpected territory with his deservedly Oscar-winning script, concentrating on one particular Indiana townie (Dennis Christopher, looking eerily like Beck) whose way of dealing with his post-teenage insecurities is to immerse himself in Italian culture – specifically that of the Giro d’Italia cycle racers. Christopher’s eccentricities bemuse his unflappably all-American parents, Barbara Barrie and Thomas Dooley, and amuse his friends – Daniel Stern, Dennis Quaid, and Jackie Earle Haley, the latter a gruff-voiced shorty who steals the picture. Though the story builds to a conventional David-vs-Goliath climax, with the friends banding together to take on the cream of the students in a gruelling cycle race, this doesn’t detract from the skill with which Tesich builds up each of the characters and their relationships. This is a writer’s showcase, not a director’s, and journeyman Yates wisely restricts himself to coaxing the best out of his appealing young leads.

October 23^rd, 2001
(seen 22-Oct-01, UGC Boldon)

by Neil Young

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