Movie Review

Directed by Richard Jobson, Starring: Kevin McKidd (Frankie), Laura Fraser (Helen), Susan Lynch (Mary), 102 minutes, 2003.

As one would expect with such a title, this is not a really cheery movie. As Frankie says, “Sometimes, for some people, things don’t work out as they might have hoped. Hope is a strange thing, a currency for people who know they’re losing. The more familiar you are with hope, the less beautiful it becomes.”

The story takes place in Edinburgh, in a culture of drinking. As a young boy Frankie observes his father’s infidelity and his mother’s hopelessness. It is confusing because he has also observed their playfulness and affection. He starts to drink and indeed is encouraged to drink by his elders. In time he becomes a violent street tough. Until, that is, he meets Helen whom he pursues with some tenderness and considerable charm. He makes a grand gesture of giving up drinking on the steps of a monument in the city. Helen is an artist and a very strong woman. Frankie is introduced to a new world of galleries, exhibitions and openings. At one of these events he is patronized by a couple of Art Critics and he threatens them with the old violence that lurks just beneath the surface of his new found sobriety. In fact, he is not really sober. In the parlance of 12 Step work he has just “put the cork in the bottle”. The problem of his soul remains. Helen says ‘goodbye’. About the violence she insightfully comments “You look out for it. It doesn’t come looking for you.” “What do I look out for?”, asks Frankie. “The past”, she replies.
“Where is love when you need it most? Where is love when the past begins to leak into your heart?”
However, he meets Mary in an A.A. group, coaches a boys’ soccer team, joins an acting group and life seems to be getting together for him. But “the past” catches up with him by surprise when he thinks he sees Mary in the same ally in the same scene as he found his father many years ago. He’s stuck and lapses into a withholding silence. He is a stone confronted by a very passionate Mary who has invested all in this relationship. But he leaves. The story is classically Tragic as Frankie gets ground down by the fates which he stubbornly defies but does not confront.

In a book I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the secret legacy of male depression Terrence Real makes a helpful distinction between overt and covert depression. Overt depression in men is hard enough to admit but can be treated when it becomes bad enough and obvious enough to require attention. Covert depression, often stemming from childhood lurks beneath the therapeutic radar because it is covered by alcohol abuse, infidelity, violence, overwork and emotional disengagement. Some of these behaviours are well rewarded in our culture even though they are defensive strategies for avoiding connection with one’s past. Frankie’s past pops up in his face throughout the movie; helping his falling down drunk father in the street, the gang that he ran with, his father’s former lover serving him tea and his mistaking another couple in the same ally way for Mary. He sees or imagines the past but never confronts and deals with it. The truth is not able to make him free.

This movie is a memoir of the director. Watch the director’s comments on the DVD for insights into both the shooting of the movie and the story behind the story.