Review of Somers Town (2008) by Sean H — 28 Aug 2008

FOR some, Somers Town will be a masterpiece, a return to the small-scale observational Shane Meadows of old.

Shot for the most part in moody black and white by the excellent Natasha Braier, it's a low-key mood piece about two boys from different backgrounds and the development of their tentative friendship in and around a London estate.

For me, though, it's a step back from the genuine progress shown in the flawed but poignant This Is England.

It's also â?? and there's no other way of putting this â?? an extended advert for Eurostar.

Making adverts seems to be a new interest for Meadows, who's recently made a series of Asda ads and is now at work on some commercials for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Neither of these projects is masquerading as a feature film, however.

Perhaps this is one of the first examples of a whole new genre of sponsored films. It's certainly the most audacious example of product placement I've seen.

Sixteen-year-old Nottingham lad Tomo (This Is England's Thomas Turgoose) runs away from his difficult childhood by hopping on a train for London. There he meets Marek (Piotr Jagiello), a sensitive young Polish immigrant who, left to his own devices while his construction worker dad is busy on the St Pancras rebuilding project, spends his time taking photos of Maria (Elisa Lasowski), the beautiful French waitress he fancies, and getting tangled up in the money-making schemes of eccentric neighbour Graham (Perry Benson).

The two get into some scrapes and try and impress Maria, while temporarily incurring the wrath of Marek's boozy but sympathetic dad Marius (Ireneusz Czop).

That's about it for the story. In terms of narrative, Paul Fraser's script defines "slight". There are some funny moments, Turgoose and Jagiello are endearing and there's an impressively powerful performance from Czop that runs deeper than anything else in the film.

But Somers Town was commissioned by ad agency Mother Vision on behalf of their client Eurostar (the credits say the film is "based on an original idea by Mother Vision") and the 71 minutes are scattered with reminders of that fact.

Marius works on the St Pancras site and tells us in subtitled dialogue at one stage that he's been on a trip on the Channel Tunnel. He had a great time and the journey was surprisingly quick. Fancy!

The flat where Marius lives with Marek overlooks St Pancras and more than once the two lads are seen admiring the huge structure ("Look at that station... amazin'!" Turgoose says).

In the later stages the lads wonder if they can save up for Eurostar tickets and go on a trip to Paris (they're totally skint and Marius is hardly flush â?? we've just seen him have to ask for credit for one apple and some gherkins in a shop â?? so it's not entirely clear how they plan to do this).

In any case, in the very next scene, the boys are holding up their Eurostar tickets to the camera while â?? get this! â?? the previously grittily monochrome film explodes into colour. Obviously travelling on Eurostar must be life-transforming. And cheap.

Their day in Paris is another of Somers Town's overlong montages set to the plaintive songs of Gavin Clarke. Originally this was an even shorter film, and these sequences are clear evidence of the padding necessary to bring it up to its current over-stretched duration.

Overall, Somers Town is pleasant, inoffensive and charming. But it's not as good as it's cracked up to be and its fealty to its paymasters fatally compromises it as a piece of storytelling.