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"You do not invite leniency, do you?" The delinquent made, not born, the sixteen-year-old skinhead with a swastika between his eyes, Tim Roth like a raging fireball. Vandalizing a Pakistani home is his latest offense, the social worker (Eric Richard) passes him on to the deputy superintendent (Bill Stewart) running an assessment center. "Bollocks" is his byword, he's sent to apply for a job and instead steals a car and huffs glue with the roommate (Terry Richards), once back he attacks the chef for not serving lunch in the afternoon. Lang's You and Me for the sustained centerpiece in a bare detention room, the systemic cycle of poverty and punishment dispassionately charted on a chalkboard until the stomper's grin momentarily drops from his face. "A job: No prospects. Dole: No cash. Thieving: No more chances. Prison: An animal. Round and round you go." For David Leland's Tales Out of School, Alan Clarke with a bluntly ferocious eye on bulletheaded youth in the Thatcherite wasteland. The protagonist hurls bricks through windows and takes a literal piss on his dossier but it's all a yowl of impotence down the tunnel, constant Steadicam roving merely accentuates the feeling of entrapment in grid after grid. "Obey the teachers, listen to your mum," cp. A Clockwork Orange throughout. The channeled aggression of a stock car rally, the alien world of a family of idealized mannequins sitting around the telly on a store display. Back in a cell at the close, glee and fear mingling in a frozen close-up. "You can lock me in here, but you can't take away the hate inside my head." Leigh is very near with Meantime, Roth shorn once more. With Geoffrey Hutchings, Sean Chapman, and Christopher Fulford.
--- Fernando F. Croce |