Lee Tyrrell
Having rented this film completely at random from my college library and placed it in my PS2 having no knowledge of what or who to expect from this film.A grim account of how refugees are treated in Britain, it certainly brought home a lot of feelings i already had about the underlying current of racism in our country, but also showed the character of Alfie (Paddy Considine) to be the typical nice guy, running round and generally being a good bloke.There is a certain degree of stereotype in this (the kids getting drunk so young, the nice British guy just looking for love, the fish out of water who learns to love), but a certain scary aspect of this film is the fact that these stereotypes may just be real life.. everyday, somewhere in the armpit of the country.To sum up, though, those with pre-misconceptions of immigrants and asylum seekers being dirty money launderers will find themselves very horrified to see the truth in this film, as that is exactly what the director has portrayed in this brilliant and (for me) surprise piece of cinema.
bob the moo
A young Russian woman Tanya and her son arrive in England and claim political asylum in order to be allowed to stay. They are then put in a holding area in a sea-side town in Northern England and told they must wait for 12-16 months while their claims are processed. They find their situation and the town to be equally bleak and look for a way out. Two options present themselves - the kindness of arcade owner Alfie and the well-paying exploitation of pornographer Les.This is a little gem of a film - very short but strong in almost every other area. The plot is not a typical life of an asylum seeker in the UK but it allows us to see life from their point of view. This doesn't mean that it's all bleak - Tanya sees humanity, exploitation, hate and indifference (the officers just doing their job who can't look into everyone's needs). The story is quite straightforward and at times doesn't seem to be going anywhere - the conclusion is pretty open, it's clever but it isn't satisfying for those wanting an end to the story. It's more a character piece that also looks at the UK's asylum policy. However it doesn't judge anyone or anything - it is wonderful in the way it simply presents the story with little sentiment or emotion and without pointing fingers at anyone or any situation. It could have easily been very preachy.The cast are great. Korzun is a great actress and brings her character's vulnerability through. Strelnikov is also good as her son although doesn't have as much to do. Considine is excellent as Alfie - at first his character just seems to be a wide-boy type, saying "man" every few words and boasting about his fights and stuff, but his character is deeply written and is well brought out. The surprise performance for me was the role of Les, the internet pornographer who offers good money to Tanya for some strip work. It was a surprise because he was played by real life pornographer Steve Perry (his porn name is Ben Dover - quite famous in the UK) - although here he is credited as "Lindsey Honey", a made-up name. The fact that he essentially plays himself (just in terms of his job) but allows himself to be judged by the audience makes it an excellent, brave performance and he deserves recognition for it.The film's weaknesses are minor but the fact that it is so bleak may be a turn off for those not willing to look past the surface. Also it moves quite slow and may frustrate at times. The way the scenes fade to black give it a bad TV feel - it feels like it was made to fade out to commercial breaks. Also the way that the seaside town is portrayed as "big brother" style town where the authorities see and know everything is at times a little hard to swallow.Overall it is a great character piece that also gives a view of the UK from an foreigners point of view. It's slow, thoughtful and non-judgemental.
hammy-3
Hot on the heels of news that the british are reputed to be the most rascist nation in the EU comes this elucidation of why that may be the case. A russian woman comes to england to meet her fiance and is only allowed in to the country if she applies for refugee status. told she has to stay in a detention centre for a year and a half and given only food vouchers and terrible accomodation to live on. At this point the movie could turn into a kafkaesque fable but instead is an ultra-naturalistic study of live in british emigration centres.It's a film that's cautiously optimistic about human nature, as a deus ex machina in the form of sweet, loving Paddy Consadine comes to save her from what he himself describes as a hell hole. This annoyed me a little bit; it seemed to be putting across the message that the english are really tolerant towards foreign immigrants and that it's "The System" that mistreats them. This seems a bit fanciful to me.One other thing that annoyed was that the only person to be hurt was an internet pornographer who pays the woman the equivalent of a month's wages back home for about an hour's striptease work. Is it really him that deserves to be hurt, and not the government, the immigration authorities, and the editors of rabble-rousing right-wing newspapers?But this is a warm, generous, beautifully shot, human film that i fear will never be seen by the people who need to see it most.
Alice Liddel
When Jean-Luc Godard made '2 or 3 Things I know about her' in 1967, he was trying to capture the monumental soullessness of consumerist society as embodied in its high-rise tenements and the like. The problem was, as Eric Rohmer noted, Godard's camera couldn't help the ugly look beautiful.
Something of the sort happens here. The Russian heroes are sent to a dismal English sea-resort, Stonehaven, in 'the armpit of the universe', its very name suggesting a negating of 'haven', refuge, home, by 'stone', architectural, bureaucratic. This is where all asylum seekers are stranded by the British government, their applications taking over a year to process. It is a literal prison, with fences, vigilant policemen, huge dogs, and surveillance cameras (pointedly compared to the porn monitors).
In one alarming scene, the film stock changes to grainy video, following Tanya and Artyom as they try to leave for London. This seems like another stylistic affectation on the drector's part, but is quickly revealed to be part of a huge CCTV panel, with a faceless apparatchik watching every move; the pair are quickly picked up by the police. The streets are littered with bored packets of refugees, endlessly queuing for the one telephone, joylessly playing the gaming machines. As during the war, food is rationed, with vouchers to chippers where the battered fish contain no fish. this is all grim enough. But even if Stonehaven wasn't a refugee camp, it is still a sea-resort off-season, its amusements ostentatiously unused, tediously rusting, just lying there like beached whales. In this atmosphere, any sign of colour or sound - eg the gaming parlour - seems forced and artificial. Tanya's huge tower-block stands like a boil in this armpit. Stonehaven is like an economically deprived, northern town during the 80s, by the sea. Kids have nothing to do but smoke, get drunk , smash things, steal. The one thriving business in the town is an internet porn company. A horrible place, hell frozen over. You can imagine how a Mike Leigh or Ken Loach might film it, mercilessly emphasising its soul-destroying numbness. When Tanya first enters her designated flat, she looks out the window at the arcade, where 'Dreamland' is proclaimed in dull neon. The point seems laboriously obvious - if this is a dream, it is a nightmare, and I want to wake up. And yet, somehow, Pavlikovsky does make Stonehaven a dreamland: if not the land of your dreams, than certainly a land in your dreams. It's not just that these old dilapidated pleasure resorts have a perverse Benjaminian nostalgic beauty, not necessarily a reminder of former happiness, but of a former, failed idea of what might constitute happiness. It's not just that the mundane paraphernalia of a sea resort, such as the bright auburn carousel on top of a gaming machine, or the tacky colour of tatty wallpaper with a Malibu pattern, seem evocative.
A lot of it has to do with the old cliche of looking at the everyday through new eyes. The very first sequence, as Tanya and Artyom sit in an airport luggage carousel waiting for the exit light, alerts us to the strangeness of the realism. Even dull shots emphasising immovable tedium, such as the repeated views of the tower-block, becomme magical, because of the different camera angles and the differing quality of the sky light. This light casts a very unEnglish colour over the misery throughout, breathtaking lilacs, blues and olives. The violence of the sea can break up the staticness of the image. Even something as oppressively routine as bingo night is made to seem alien, fantastic. That this is a transforming vision is suggested by Tanya's beautiful painting, which looks like an intricate Eastern tapestry, and suggests how something flat can have resonance. When she leaves, she takes her vision with her, but she leaves the painting with the already marvellously strange Alfie, hopefully galvanising him into a new way of looking at the world, as she/Pavlikovsky did us. That a journey into a strange land so harrowing, that a romance ending up unconsummated and in a shattering act of violence (reminiscent of Shane Meadows' films, but undermining his bleakness) should result in a film so uplifting, so heartening of spirit, is only one of Pavlikovsky's miraculous achievements.
