Ray & Liz

Dark, upsetting and slightly depressing, brought about by excellent actors, filming and direction. Like the genre of plays like the birthday party, entertaining mr sloane and abigails party it combines tragic with everyday people's lives.

Ray & Liz 2018 (on film4 ) it's a grim study of a family (2 boys) living in poverty with their parents. I'll say it again It's grim, the parents have little aspiration beyond the day to day existence but for the kids it's about surviving. The film made by the older of the two children, he clearly escaped the rut of poverty. It's immensely watchable in a fly on the wall kind of the way ( watch the film to see what I mean) Essential viewing for fans of social realism. 8/10.

Richard Billingham's "Ray & Liz" is worthy to take its place next to the early films of both Terence Davies and Bill Douglas and like their films is largely autobiographical. It is a picture of Billingham's abusive, alcoholic family, his parents, Ray and Liz, and his extended family and naturally it's depressing but also not without a grim humour and as befits someone who has made his name as a photographer is full of images that might best be described as depressingly beautiful.

There is an old saying, write about what you know and in terms of world cinema it's those films that home in to a specific aspect of their country's national identity that work best. Britain has always been a class-conscious nation and that's probably why those films that dealt honesty with working class life and made in the early sixties, (the Kitchen Sink movies), that have remained freshest in the memory. It was something that Davies and Douglas knew only too well and which Billingham has now adopted.

This is a film in which every tiny detail is perfectly realised; the cheap artificial flowers, ornaments and paintings that Liz uses to brighten a home where the wallpaper is peeling off the walls and dogs pee on newspapers on the floor. Forget about something like "The Favourite", this is the best designed film of the year. It's also superbly played by its totally unknown cast. Ella Smith is particularly good as the neglectful Liz, someone perhaps more deserving of our pity than our scorn. Ray and Liz may be products of their society but Billingham, unlike Ken Loach, isn't really too concerned with the wider social picture but with the personal. This is his home movie and it's a deeply felt one.

An interesting film, with strong central performances, which nevertheless doesn't quite work. It captures the boredom and monotony of lives in many British cities in the 1980's. The cities that had been ravaged by the unemployment that had resulted from the neo-liberal policies of the Margaret Thatcher led Conservative Party.

The film is strongest in its portrayal of the eponymous central characters whose believability stems from them being unable and unwilling to change. It's refreshing to see a film that doesn't soften the edges of their characters by portraying them as having gleaned lessons from their actions resulting in them becoming better people.

Visually, the film is impressive, imbuing the audience with the same feeling of claustrophobia the characters possess. Sometimes the feeling is so oppressive it seems as if you are stuck there in the flat with them, almost overcome with the smell of stale cigarette smoke, spilt home brew and dog.

Despite a lot of positives, the film never feels as if it is the sum of its parts. The scenes work in isolation but put together never quite add up to a satisfying film. It more closely resembles a series of short films welded together that doesn't quite work as a cohesive whole.

It think it is unfair to think of Ray and Liz as wholly unlikeable because it is a surface level interpretation and it unsympathetic view on the audience's part to what drives the character's negligence. Clearly, they are two deeply flawed characters whose lack of humanity, or negligence, is driven by their constant battle to survive in a very bleak era.

There is nothing admirable about these two characters but the film definitely delivers a strong social message about the fate of the vulnerable in a society that ordinarily and continues to look down on them without remorse. In that sense, you begin to understand that Ray and Liz are the way they are because society has treated them cruelly and swept them out of view.