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THIS
IS NOT A LOVE SONG
5/10
Bille
Eltringham : UK 2002 : 91 mins
 Simon
Beaufoy remains best known for The Full Monty, but most of his
other scripts tend toward less upbeat territory – especially his alarmingly
prescient foot-and-mouth drama The Darkest Light (also directed
by Eltringham). Love Song goes even further, into full-on paranoid
rural gothic: two fish-out-of-water townies are man-hunted by yokels in
the Middle Of Nowhere after one of them ‘accidentally’ shoots a farmer’s
young daughter.
Beaufoy and Eltringham strain a little too hard in search of a Brit Deliverance
or Southern Comfort, but the results are effective enough on a
scene-by-scene thriller basis, especially those concentrating on interplay
between the mismatched central duo. Michael Colgan and Kenny Glenaan are
the film’s strong suit as motormouth, patience-sapping Spike and practical-minded
ex-soldier Heaton: they’re like an Irvine Welsh version of the old Of
Mice and Men double-act, with a hint of Beckett thrown in.
As the leader of the would-be lynch mob on their trail, gimlet-eyed David Bradley
achieves a suitably gaunt grim-reaper relentlessness, even if the film’s
wider take on country justice lacks the sophistication of, say, Sweden’s
Bloody Angels from
a few years back. Instead, we have an treatment of the land that’s oddly
non-specific in geographic terms: Spike is from Ulster, Heaton Scottish,
the farmers from Yorkshire, and all constantly refer to the nearest conurbation
as ‘The City’ – you can almost hear the capital letters in their voices
as Beaufoy fumbles towards allegory.
But there’s much to like about the nicely atmospheric, sinister-nightfall-in-the-countryside
stuff captured by cinematographer Robbie Ryan, especially when accompanied
by the ominous strains of the title tune, orchestrated for moodily strings
from the pounding P.i.L. original (which we also hear at various points)
by Adrian Johnston and Mark Rutherford.
But director Eltringham gets carried away with the digital-video format, relying
on already-overfamiliar juddering stop-motion blurriness to convey the
extremis of our heroes’ situations. Spike’s aerosol-induced hallucinations
are striking (all purples, yellows and midnight blues) but and we could
do without sharing his more prosaic visions: guilt-induced but clumsily-visualised
flashes of the murdered girl. These rough edges are a shame, because Eltringham
is more than capable of some powerful sequences when settling down, pulling
back, and letting the capable cast get on with acting out the nightmare.
14th
August 2002
(seen same day, on video, Edinburgh
Film Festival)
For all the
reviews from the 2002 Edinburgh Film Festival
click here.
by Neil
Young
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