Philophobia

Philophobia is beautiful from start to finish. Visually and narratively, it excels in fully immersing you into this small town coming-of-age story. Yes, the run time is long and it is worth every minute!

It would be more fulfilling to spend 2 hours screaming in a dark room than watching this. The dialogue is constantly bland and adds nothing. There is a good movie in here somewhere but it's about 20 minutes long. The extra 100 minutes is literally meaningless.

You've seen this film before. You have!

Well, maybe not this exact one, but you've seen all its components in other movies - just in a different order perhaps.

Let's have a look at those components:

Elegiac film about a last summer of innocence? Check!

A sensitive aspiring writer whose best friends seems to be unlikely choices? Check!

A sensitive aspiring writer who wants to leave his small minded, small town? Check!

And those best friends - is one a bland but pleasant enough character who is really just a means of allowing us to hear the sensitive writer's thoughts, and does the other one provide comic relief? Check?

And although the friends say that they too want to escape town, does it become clear that they don't because they are suited to small-town life and will never leave? Of course!

How about a seemingly unattainable girl who barely notices the sensitive writer? Yep, got one of those!

Does she have a two-dimensional insensitive brute of a boyfriend who is an obstacle standing in the way of true love but who mysteriously seems to have convinced the girl he should her boyfriend? You bet!

I know. What about a wild animal that acts as a metaphor for freedom and may or may not have some kind of metaphysical role as well? From start to finish!

Add to this a script that treats the female characters as nothing more than cyphers; completely lacking any kind of inner life, some 'they all look the same' racist stereotyping, and an ending, rounding off two very long hours, that helps tie up the loose ends but which is morally very suspect indeed, and you have As I Am (Philophobia, in some markets).

I was being very generous when I gave the film six points. Really, don't bother.

Guy Davies' Philophobia blew me away when I saw it at PÖFF. Beautiful cinematography, fantastic acting and a story that made me laugh, gasp, swear at the screen and I'm not ashamed to say shed a little tear. I can't recommend this movie enough. Everyone should see it! Indie films are the one.

I got to see this film almost by accident. I wanted to see one more film before they close down cinemas in England again, and this one sounded the least worst of an uninspiring bunch of films that were showing this week. I'm glad I chose it. It was unexpectedly good. It has the kind of character-driven plot I like most and the story is slow moving but it draws you in and holds your attention through all the turns of the plot, right to the end.

It's probably difficult to put anything really new into a coming of age film, and this has a few familiar tropes - the love triangle, lads doing reckless stunts, discovering sex, the end of school prank . What distinguishes it is that it is perfectly cast and the actors' performances are exactly right. Also that it well conveys the separateness of the teenage world. The adults have little to do with the young character's lives and none of them seem to have fathers still living at home. It's also very cinematic and makes good use of the landscape in the Five Valleys area of the Cotswolds, where it wasfiled.. It was only subsequently that I found out that this is the director's first film. I also found that it has had a few dismissive reviews in the mainstream press, including one in The Guardian that was frankly rude. It deserves better. A pity that the cinemas are being closed again only a week after it was first released. Maybe it will get another run after the 2nd December, if the British government doesn't extend the lockdown.