Somers Town (2008)
Somers Town (BRIT) Directed by Shane Meadows Written by Paul Fraser Starring Thomas Turgoose; Piotr Jagiello; Irenevsk Czop; Elisa Lasowski; Perry Benson
At barely 70 minutes, Shane Meadows’ latest skirts the parameters of what is usually considered a feature length film. The story focuses on troubled fourteen year old Tomo (Thomas Turgoose; star of Meadows’ This is England), who travels by train from his home in The Midlands to Somers Town, a section of London near Kings Cross and St. Pacras Station. Meadows is a filmmaker who likes to tell stories about the area and milieu with which he is familiar (The Midlands) so shifting locations is as big for him as it was for The Dardenne brothers recent locale change in Lorna’s Silence. Though we don’t get a full explanation of his back story, Tomo (Turgoose’s real life nickname, by the way) is either abandoned or a runaway, but whatever the case he quickly finds himself homeless, penniless, and living on the mean streets of his newly adopted home. He befriends Marek (Piotr Jagiello), an introverted Polish teen who’s into photography and has only recently moved to the area with his father, hard-drinking construction worker Marusz (Irenevsk Czop). The two mismatched boys spend time with one another, fantasizing about older local French waitress Maria (Elisa Lasowski) and working for lawn chair renter/council estate neighbor Graham (Perry Benson). Filmed almost entirely in black and white, Somers Town was (oddly) conceived and financed by Eurostar and was originally turned down by Meadows because he worried there was a corporate agenda lurking behind the funding, though he suggested frequent collaborator (and childhood neighbor) Paul Fraser as writer. Fraser wound up writing the script, and then Eurostar came back to Meadows, who then became interested. Though the original idea was for a feature, the project was actually written, developed, and budgeted as a short right up until the actual start of principal photography, but Meadows shot long days and extended takes, somehow turning it into a feature (albeit a short one) as he went. Music by Gavin Clark (whom Meadows also made a doc about) and Ted Barnes is moody and fitting, although the songs are very similar to one another in sound and were probably used in a few more places than were necessary, including several montages that feel slightly out of place given the overall style of the film. It must be said that, perhaps owing to the short script and lack of shooting days, the story itself feels a little underdeveloped - more about Maria and both of the boys backgrounds would have been nice. Nonetheless, an interesting slice of life from a director who continues to produce quality work.