No Ordinary Fool

British film directors and coming-of-age dramas do seem to go hand-in-hand, do they not? Last year’s This is England by Shane Meadows stands out amongst them, though, for its originality, humour, and colour, as well its ultimately dark themes. He returns now with this simple social portrait of life in and around St. Pancras train station in London.

(Before you get too excited by this news, please take heed of the substantial “health warning” at the end of the review!)

Back also is Thomas Turgoose, who, despite looking considerably older than last time out, finds his role of Shaun in This is England being reprised in several ways here.

His character, this time, is called Tomo and the film opens with him arriving in London on the train from his hometown of Nottingham. Once more, he has family problems, has a run-in with bullies, falls for an older woman, gets taken advantage of by a more streetwise character, and displays increasingly questionable fashion sense as the film progresses.

However, where this film does differ from its predecessor is that it is ultimately more about Marek (Piotr Jagiello), a Polish teenager that Tomo encounters. Marek is in London while his father (Ireneusz Czop) works on the new Channel Tunnel terminus. Marek’s father works hard by day and drinks even harder by night. The result is that Marek – a quiet and innocent boy – is mostly left to his own devices. This tamely involves taking photographs everywhere he goes, as well as dozens of portrait snaps of Maria (Elisa Lasowski), a Parisienne who works in a local cafe.

Through loneliness, both boys quickly become friends. They compete for the affections of Maria, they get mixed up with a local Dell-Boy character (Perry Benson), and end up going on a huge drinking spree that brings the problems in Marek’s life to a head. The scenes are frequently quite humorous, especially where cultural differences arise This includes a toilet-humour scene regarding Polish food and differing outlooks on how romantic pursuits should be carried out. There are also some good visual gags to keep an eye out for.

As with This Is England, the film does raise once more the interesting spectacle of a female character flirting with boys several years her junior. If the roles were gender-reversed, there would be outrage. Here, though, it is interpreted as cute and fun. Perception, as always, is everything!

Alas, it is also essential to point out that this film was commissioned by an advertisement agency on behalf of their client Eurostar. While the film avoids being crass in terms of how it goes about it, the whole offering is, in effect, one long product placement. Tomo is travelling down by train from the Midlands. He meets a Scottish woman onboard, which neatly hints at how St. Pancras now connects the whole of the UK to Europe. There are then many shots of the train station, not to mention Marek’s father even marvelling at how it all works in one scene.

However, the pièce de résistance comes at the end when the film explodes into colour as the two boys save up for and then go to visit Maria in Paris. Naturally, they travel by train, so it becomes the conduit by which they can escape the grey banality of their London estate lives!

I am unapolegetic about giving the concluding scene away here, mostly because it is not actually relevant to the real denouement that occurs. Rather, it is to demonstrate why Maria is simply a character introduced so that there is an excuse to conclude the film on the far side of la Manche.

It is hard not to be cynical about such a commercial arrangement, not least when audiences are still being asked to pay the full cost of a cinema ticket to go see it. What I find more disappointing though is the number of professional film reviewers who barely do more than hint at how this film has come about, given the huge effect that it has on the plot. Why is this, I wonder?

In short, it is difficult to truly describe Somers Town as a proper feature-length film. It is not so difficult to describe it as a distasteful development in film-making. As a work though, it is a light and frequently humorous tale about loneliness, friendship, and the changing face of London made by one of the better directors out there. If you can, see it for free. It seems only fair!