Edward Porter
Ae Fond Kiss...
15, 104 mins
Ken Loach’s latest film (on which he worked, once again, with the writer Paul Laverty) is set in Glasgow and tells of a young Pakistani, Casim (Atta Yaqub), torn between his love for a white woman, Roisin (Eva Birthistle), and his unwillingness to hurt his traditionalist parents. Among the many British race-relations films that have lately used the same template, this is a superior piece of work. Its didactic intentions sometimes show through too plainly, but its pair of lovers are always believable individuals, the wobbles in their relationship having as much to do with personal, nonracial frictions as with Casim’s looming parents. It is a pity, then, that the plot becomes haphazard in the later stages, when Loach and Laverty allow Casim’s family to behave in a way that is not only dogmatic but unpleasantly sly. Three stars
Edward Porter
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Trauma
15, 94 mins
The darkness detectable behind Colin Firth’s regular rom-com features is given full rein in the director Marc Evans’s initially interesting but ultimately silly psychological drama. Firth plays the traumatised survivor of a car crash in which his wife has apparently died; he attempts to piece his life together, and starts a flirtation with an American neighbour (a de trop Mena Suvari). But, as the country simultaneously mourns a murdered pop star, another death in which he may or may not be implicated, his mind gradually disintegrates, and with it goes the film. Points possibly being made about bereavement, guilt and the cult of celebrity are thoroughly suffocated by a confusing narrative and an excessive reliance on stylistics. When all is said and done, we still end up with a girl being menaced by a weirdo in a basement. Two stars
Peter Whittle
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Kontroll
15, 110 mins
Set completely in the hellish subterranean world of Budapest’s underground railways, the Hungarian director Nimrod Antal’s gloomy black comedy (a big hit in his native country) follows an oddball gang of raggedy ticket collectors as they fight with hostile passengers and engage in violent rivalries with fellow workers. Bulcsu, the morose group leader (Sandor Csanyi), develops an attraction for an eccentric girl who rides the trains in a mouse costume, while at the same time the whole system is terrorised by a killer in the shadows. Rather like the Circle Line, these various plot lines go round and round, ending up nowhere in particular. The humour is too sparse and Bulcsu’s motley gang are not likeable enough to offset the monotonous brutality of the milieu. Two stars
Peter Whittle
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In My Skin
18, 95 mins
In this, her debut feature, the French director Marina de Van also stars as Esther, a young woman who takes the infliction of self-harm to new heights. After accidentally gashing her leg at a party, she finds herself taking an unhealthy interest in the festering cut. A perplexed but understanding boyfriend is no match for the growing blood lust aimed at her own body, and soon she’s using odd pieces of metal, knives and even her own teeth to open old wounds and start new ones in a series of prolonged and horrific sequences. The idea of the body as a barrier to the unreachable outside world is an interesting one, but we learn so little about Esther that sympathy turns finally to revulsion. And the director should have credited her audience with more imagination — such graphic detail is unnecessary and, finally, rather pornographic. Two stars
Peter Whittle