Slices
of Life
THE LOW
DOWN
A fine debut drama from England follows in many traditions
With Aidan Gillen, Kate Ashfield, Dean Lennon Kelly
Written and directed by Jamie Thraves
JUST WHEN YOU THINK there's no originality left in the cinema, or that they've run out of stories to tell, along comes a movie that proves it: Jamie Thraves' astonishing little debut film, The Low Down, traverses so many film styles and deals with such mundane stuff that you may not be able to explain how it exhilarates you.
What seems at first to be a casual slice of life about three British friends slowly evolves into a poignant story about turning points and moving on. A less accomplished movie would probably collapse under the weight of so much authorial presence: When a big white jet soars overhead, and the drama's central character looks longingly at it, wishing he could fly away and get out of his rut, you don't need a film degree to catch the symbolism. But Thraves is so inscrutably confident of every move he makes in The Low Down that you want to buy Frank a ticket and see him off at the gate.
He's a winning fellow, this Frank (Aidan Gillen), lean and fit with a tidy mop of wavy black hair, a smile that stops traffic, and just enough low self-esteem to keep him from making a big move in his life. He has a college degree, but like so many people in class-conscious England, his accent makes him sound like he doesn't (at least to an American ear).
Frank works in the scene shop of a TV game show constructing gigantic plaster heads and body parts. He has an amiable dad (mid-40s) who's still getting his life together, and soon after we meet him, he finds a new girlfriend, Ruby (Kate Ashfield), a gentle pixie with blond highlights who just came off a long-term relationship with a guy who let her down.
His two best mates are also his colleagues on the job: Mike (Dean Lennon Kelly), the job foreman, a handsome rascal in a seven-year relationship with a gal who tolerates his playful ass pats and caustic badinage; and John (Tobias Menzies), Frank's friend from way back, who plays guitar and does his own art on the side, and who's not always on time for work, a circumstance that grows from his unrequited desire to be more creative (which his job simply will not allow).
Their lives unfold for 90 minutes in The Low Down, and while virtually nothing happens that you haven't seen before, the beauty of it comes in watching everything happen so well. Thraves unravels these characters slowly, laying on their darker traits in the way we really learn things about people we meet. Most of his scenes don't have endings, and so sometimes it takes a scene or two to learn what happened (usually nothing big) in a conflict from a few scenes back.
Best of all, his movie is deeply humane, and you constantly get the feeling that these people love each other the best they can (which is pretty good). When the friends fight, their animosity dissipate quickly, and when Frank has a bad moment with Ruby, it's not long before they forgive each other and move on. This may not be entirely realistic, but then what drama is? In fact, Thraves is a surface realist, chipping away at appearances to find the shadowy but still palatable idealism inside.
With its jumpy hand-held cameras and improvisational manner, The Low Down looks and feels at first like a work of social realism, the type of movie that goes back to British cinema's documentary tradition, and especially to the dramatic films of the pioneering Ken Loach (who began his career in the 1960s and still makes great movies today). But then Thraves throws in some New Wave technique (freeze frames, quick cuts) and some tender Neo-Realism and some straight-up art film showiness.
This pastiche of style makes his movie thrilling to watch because you never know just where the camera will take you. And yet, when you get there, something always happens: An extreme closeup lets you concentrate on a face or a pair of entangled bodies, a scene repeated three times from three angles allows you to share the sensation of time standing still for the characters. Thraves' instincts are flawless, and he never uses style without some content to go with it. Just as he borrows his story from the best of life, he borrows his technique from the best of cinema, and nothing feels out of synch.
So where does it all lead? For Frank, John and Mike, life goes on without much serious interruption. They party hard at their weekend bacchanals, do their jobs each day with all they have, struggle through this difficult passage in their camaraderie, and dream. You want them all to have perfectly happy lives, and of course they don't, although Thraves never once gives up hope. He just doesn't make life easy - which it isn't, especially for working people with so much heart.