15, 104 mins
This being Loach, and the town being Glasgow, the would-be lovers have to crawl over broken glass to get to the bedroom. Birthistle’s secondary school teacher is verbally scourged by her parish priest (Gerard Kelly at his neck-bulging best); and Casim’s “selfish” transgression threatens to ruin his family’s reputation in an ethnic community that already feels under siege. His father’s carefully arranged plans — Casim’s prior engagement to an upstanding Muslim girl, and his older sister’s impending marriage — are on a knife edge. “Why sacrifice your entire family for one girl?” asks his clubby best friend, Hamid, utterly baffled.
Underneath Paul Laverty’s script you can sense the ardour-cooling racial freeze — one of the more unpleasant facts of life since “the war on terrorism” was openly declared. The lovers skate across it like a couple of hopeless beginners. Every tumble looks like being their last. A snatched holiday in Spain ends in recrimination.
The insecurities run deep. In Casim’s comfortable home they go back to the tragic death of his father’s twin brother during the Partition of India in 1947. For Roisin, there’s the untidy matter of an old divorce, and now an affair that could derail her career. Love is one thing; commitment is an entirely different kettle of fish.
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Loach’s handling of these awkward issues is light and understated. You feel for the struggling couple precisely because they are so fresh, inexperienced, and intimate. Ae Fond Kiss is not a flawless film, nor Loach’s best. But it’s his most optimistic in years.