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Once
Upon a Time in the Midlands
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Judging from Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, Morvern Callar and Once Upon a Time in the Midlands, 2002/3 was a good period for British cinema – for a change. Once Upon a Time in the Midlands might seem, from a distance, a typical piece of television-style, kitchen-sink, British comedy-drama, especially when one scans the familiar faces in the cast. But one need only see how the film transforms the stereotype usually incarnated by Kathy Burke – who is here as impressively tough as she is hilarious – to gauge how terrifically fresh it is. The plot bears a passing resemblance to the John Cassavetes project She's So Lovely, filmed in 1997 by his son Nick. Jimmy (Robert Carlyle) is a criminal who gets out of jail and heads straight for his old flame, Shirley (Shirley Henderson). She is torn between this dangerous attraction and her wavering devotion to her new boyfriend, the dependable-to-dull Dek (Rhys Ifans). The joking reference to Sergio Leone's Westerns in the film's title is carried mainly through the lettering of the title credits and a constant guitar twang in the musical score. But if there's a deeper purpose to the running gag, it's to suggest that even the most banal of personal stories is high melodrama to those who are caught inside it and must live it out to the end. By posing Shirley between two starkly different men, director and co-writer Shane Meadows (A Room for Romeo Brass, 1999) revisits the hallowed genre of Hollywood's classic screwball romantic comedies. But he manages to beautifully solve a problem that haunts many films of this type, even sometimes the greatest ones. Why should we ever believe, in a movie designed to flatter our fantasies of a vicarious life, that security is preferable to thrills? Most movies on this topic ultimately opt for a few tricky plot moves and an unconvincing sermon about the need to uphold the status quo. Meadows, however, has a special ingredient that changes the way we normally process this information. As maddening and cringe-inducing as Dek often is, in one department he is magic: his warm, tender relationship with Shirley's young daughter. These completely believable scenes of their interaction mark another innovation by Meadows: romantic comedies usually run a mile from the real and burning questions of having and raising children. Once Upon a Time in the Midlands has been widely compared to Mike Leigh's work, even in its publicity. But that sells it short, because it contains what Leigh's dour, pompous movies invariably lack: charm, compassion and a genuine affection for ordinary people in their everyday problems. MORE Meadows: Dead Man's Shoes © Adrian Martin September 2003 |
