TOMO (THOMAS TURGOOSE) AND MAREK (PIOTR JAGIELLO) TIE ONE ON IN SOMERS TOWN

He just got carried away

Somers Town is a short feature of only 72 minutes, a fresh, delightful, touching, and wholly original movie by the maker of the 2006 This Is England, with the same star, the feisty little Thomas Turgoose.

Then, he was Shaun, a misfit in school who gained acceptance as an underage skinhead in a world of big tough boys and men. This time he's Tomo, a blond kid from the Midlands who runs away from home because there's nothing for him there, and comes to London on the train, making friends along the way with a young woman who turns up again briefly just when he needs a helping hand. Somers Town is rife with the pleasures of improv and making-do in a cold cruel world that's still full of opportunities when seen through the eyes of a gutsy young lad.

Tomo winds up in the tough (and obscure) section of London called Somers Town near St. Pancras Station, which happens to have a high-speed train to Paris running out of it, the Eurostar.

The railroad could have commissioned Meadows (who's famous in England) to make this film, somewhat as the Musée d'Orsay comissioned Hou Hsiao-hsien's Voyage of the Red Balloon and Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours. Actually it did commission a film from Meadows. But what Eurostar wanted was only a 12-minute commercial -- he just got carried away. There are several brief but glowing testimonials to the train in the resulting film, but much, much else. This is more like accepting liberal patronage than a selling out, and the real criticism, if any, is that Somers Town is unclassifiable, too long for a short and too sketchy for a full-length film. But who cares? Whatever it is, it's a joy.

Meadows' black and white digital film has a rough look and offbeat style unlike any advert, as well as, from a commercial viewpoint, too much illegal behavior on view, notably underage drinking. This is anything but slick promotional stuff. It's more subversive than you'd expect anything commissioned by public transport to be. Nevertheless it does offhandedly offer the Paris train as a wonderful lark, and otherwise is basically sweet -- but also heart-rending in how it depicts teenagers adrift in the world.

Adrift in Somers Town, Tomo is sittting drinking a pint of beer he's cadged out of liquor shop customers when three bigger boys gather round him with menacing chumminess, drink off the rest of his beer, and send him running when they start eying his warmup jacket. They catch him, beat him up, and steal his bag, leaving him without money or possessions. He's still got the jacket, but that's scant comfort with no place to go and a face covered in bruises and red marks.

Luckily the woman from the train comes by and buys him a meal. Then along comes Marek (Piotr Jagiello), a big Polish boy with a mop of dark hair, a gentle voice, and a 35 mm camera around his neck. He's always snapping pictures.

The film has already been popping back and forth for a while between Marek and Tomo, showing Marek at home and his dad going off to work when Tomo's on the train. As Tomo gets his hard knocks, Marek is engaged in the lonely pursuit of wandering with his camera. When the two come together, and Marek, almost under threat from Tomo, hides him in his apartment, a hilarious friendship develops between the two lonely, independent boys.

Marek's dad (Ireneusz Czop), with whom he speaks only Polish, is a handsome guy and a mensch, but he's not much company for his son since he's either at work or getting drunk. He's recently divorced and neither he nor Merek is handling the loss of the lady of the house well.

But a series of nicely done 3x5 black and white photo portraits Marek's done show hope in his life. He's madly in love with a pretty French waitress called Maria (Elisa Lasowski). She may not be aware Marek calls her his "girlfriend"; they've never even kissed. Before long Tomo too is totally smitten and vying for Maria's attentions. In a very Sixties sequnce Marek and Tomo give Maria a magical ride home from the cafe after work in an abandoned wheel chair garlanded with flowers. Meanwhile both boys separately, then together, have begun earning money doing odd jobs for a fat cockney street vendor and all-around huckster called Graham (the very droll Perry Benson).

To think of these characters is to remember their voices. Meadows lets us revel in the music of Marek and his dad's impenetrable but natural-sounding Polish, Marek's soft stutter in English, Tomo's strident whine, and Graham's glib declarations in the cockney idiom. Maria's diplomatic acceptance of the dual courtship keeps both hoping. A disappointment leads to a drunk and a serious talk between Maerk and his dad, and the Eurostar comes into useful play in a dreamlike, feel-good finale in color. But the fun is in the whole ride, not any payoffs.

Writers have been connecting Somers Town to French New Wave films for its playful, improvised quality, but the people and the setting are distinctly English, as is the hardscrabble bland of truth and fantasy. Knowing this wasn't going to get to 80 minutes, I found myself looking at my watch for a different reason than usual -- because I didn't want it to end. It's hard not to wish Meadows had given us more of this wonderful stuff. But the staccato, offhand style might wilt under the pressure of too much stretching. He sure can make wonders happen with randomness though -- a nicked laundry bag of women's clothes and a set of lawn chairs come to life in his hands, and every bit of dialogue feels unexpected and real. Obviously he has a knack for drawing splendid work from relatively untrained actors. This time Piotr Jagiello is the intriguing newcomer, a little like Michael Cera but less calculated and artificial. This is the kind of stuff you wait for, rich with the indefinable qualities that make a great film and far more than the sum of its parts.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.