Through detailed rapid voiceover, we learn from the outset that the preoccupations of 15 year-old Oliver are twofold: Jordana, his broody and slightly dangerous classmate, and the lack of any sexual spark in his parents’ love life.
Not that there’s much spark in any aspect of the life of the Tates in the coastal Welsh town of Barry (birthplace of Australian Prime Minister Julie Gillard).
Lloyd and Jill Tate - scene-stealing performances by Noah Taylor and Sally Hawkins
Lloyd and Jill (superbly played by Noah Taylor and Sally Hawkins) are disappointed and disillusioned. A long-term depressive, marine biologist Lloyd is a loner and a man who has no idea what makes a relationship. Jill just wants to go back up the hill and rediscover some of her lost youth.
Oliver’s concerns about the slow demise of his parent’s marriage is made the more difficult when the mystic goofball Graham Purvis and the worst mullet seen on film for a number of years becomes their new neighbour. He was Jill’s first love.
On the cusp of childhood and adulthood, young Oliver navigates the complexities of his parent’s problems in his own inimitable (and at times very funny) way. But his main concern is Jordana.
Adolescent love
She’s already spread hundreds of photographs round the school of the two of them kissing under the railway bridge. But that was purely to make her ex-boyfriend jealous (it worked). Unexpectedly, the two become an item – but only after the ex had beaten up Oliver in the school playground.
A love of pyrotechnics seems to be the shared interest for the two – it’s certainly not Oliver’s love of Nietzsche or his need to turn up to the cinema an hour early to reserve decent seats. (Shades of Woody Allen abound throughout).
Theirs is an adolescent relationship of uncertainty, mistrust, a certain emotional distance and, for Oliver, dealing with parents who do not care. But as the threat of bad haircut guru increases, so Jordana’s needs increase, leading to the New Year’s Eve climax when all Oliver’s worlds collide.
The script of Submarine is occasionally very witty, with Oliver benefitting as an unnervingly clever and articulate 15 year-old – punctuated throughout the film, his rapid-fire voiceovers are at times incisive, acerbic and deadpan.
But in its ‘borrowed’ French New Wave look (even choosing to set the film in the 1980s), jump shot editing and quirky, nonconformist humour, Submarine tries a little too hard to be different in its quirkiness.
Personal rating: 2.5 stars
Submarine
- Directed by Richard Ayoade (Man to Man with Dean Learner – TV, Arctic Monkeys at the Apollo – documentary)
- Written by Richard Ayoade (The Mighty Boosh, AD/BC: A Rock Opera – both TV)
- Produced by Mary Burke (Bunny and the Bull, A Complete History of My Sexual Favours – documentary), Mark Herbert (Four Lions, This is England), Andy Stebbing (Kicks, A Social Call – short)
- Starring Craig Roberts (Jane Eyre, Red Lights), Yasmin Paige (I Could Never Be Your Woman, The Sarah Jane Adventures – TV), Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky, Made In Dagenham), Noah Taylor (Red Dog, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
Keith Lawrence - Published writer of articles in magazines, newspapers and websites, predominantly on culture, alongside ghostwriter/editor/copywriter.
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