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The bitter pun of the title has the interim margin where hostility festers, a family on the dole in London's East End. Dad (Jeffrey Robert) commutes from living room couch to unemployment office, Mum (Pam Ferris) is breadwinner and squabbling partner, smartass (Phil Daniels) and slowpoke (Tim Roth) comprise the offspring. "Picture of happiness." Squashed lives in the cramped council flat, Mike Leigh makes sure to keep the camera extra close. The timid lass at the pub (Tilly Vosburgh), cowering from the choleric hooligan (Gary Oldman) last seen raging inside a metal barrel in a signature image. A fixed view of a busted washing machine ("Buggered, innit?"), a balletic choreography of crabby figures waiting for the toilet in a narrow corridor, a thousand irritations (from the pen that won't write at the bingo parlor to the kitchen window that tumbles off its hinges with a simple pull) in the dire shadow of Thatcher's austerity. "Typical of your generation, that is." The aunt (Marion Bailey) "took a secretarial course" and married into the middle class, the smiling façade cracks and her husband (Alfred Molina) comes from the bank to find her slumped and lachrymose. Big Ben and Trafalgar Square lions and Churchill's statue, sights for tourists while the underclass gnaws at itself. Graffiti-scrawled elevator and abandoned pram, anthill metaphor and economics debate. "Mercantile law. Commerce, market forces, supply and demand, banking, insurance..." "Screwing who you can." Domestic suffocation, tragicomic anger, dogged empathy, Leigh's great qualities already in spades. A flicker of fraternal warmth is an oasis amid claustrophobic graininess, a blocky lad's nickname switching from "Kermit" to "Kojak" makes do as a happy ending. With Peter Wight, Eileen Davies, Herbert Norville, Leila Bertrand, and Hepburn Graham.
--- Fernando F. Croce |