| for Tribune : Lodge Kerrigan's 'Keane' [5/10] |
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| Monday, 11 September 2006 | |
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THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keane USA 2004 Starring : Damian Lewis, Abigail Breslin Director : Lodge Kerrigan UK release date : 22nd September 2006 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NOTHING to do with footballers Roy or Robbie (nor even with the fey, chart-friendly Brit-popsters), this Keane is instead an edgy psychological character-study set in an overcrowded and bleakly impersonal modern-day Manhattan. Actually, there is a football 'connection' here of sorts: as John Motson might put it, this is very much 'a film of two halves': both of them significantly, perhaps even fatally, flawed. William Keane (Lewis) has been searching Manhattan for his daughter Sophie for several months. He's increasingly desperate, volatile and prone to substance-abuse - and the longer we spend in his chattery, nervy company the more we start to wonder whether Sophie actually exists at all. Indeed, so up-close-and-personal is writer-director Kerrigan's hand-held approach that scene after scene spent in the protagonists's sweatily tormented and antisocial company becomes distinctly wearing. It's a great relief, then, when something akin to a plot kicks in before the half-way mark. In somewhat contrived circumstances, Keane befriends a neighbour (Amy Ryan) and her young daughter Kira (Breslin) - and ends up being asked to look after the child when her mother is stranded at work. Having previously been primarily concerned for Keane's mental welfare, we now realise that he's by no means the only vulnerable individual involved in this particular narrative... The Keane/Kira relationship is undeniably touching: it helps that Keane becomes much less jittery and volatile in the moppet's company, and that little Breslin (also currently to be seen in Little Miss Sunshine, and easily the most consistently impressive thing about this picture) turns in a quite exceptional performance of convincing, worrying vulnerability. 'Worrying,' because in the third act Kerrigan suggests that we're in for some kind of horrific climax - that Keane's (mostly) unsympathetic behaviour, which we've already seen can be stunningly rude, beyond-the-pale selfish and scarily violent, might lead him into the abyss. This prospect gives proceedings a real atmosphere of tension - but by this stage we've had to swallow several key plot-points of increasingly dubious plausibility. These strain and ultimately snap even the most charitably generous suspension of disbelief, unfortunately torpedoing Kerrigan's laudable objectives. Neil Young ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ for the next issue of Tribune magazine full review available here |
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