My Name Is Joe

Ken Loach has been making films about working class families for many years and My Name is Joe is one of his most powerful. Peter Mullan is instantly likable as Joe Kavanagh, a recovering alcoholic from Ruchill, a decaying suburb of Glasgow, who has a lot at stake. He has fallen in love with Sarah (Louis Goodall), a health worker, and wants to go straight but circumstances conspire against him. He is determined to help his friend Liam (David McKay) when he gets behind on his payments to a drug dealer but his options are limited and he is forced to make a choice that threatens the stability of his fragile relationship.

Mullan won the Best Actor award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival and it is fully deserved. We know that Joe's problems are overwhelming but we root for him to make it in spite of the odds because of his warmth and humor and generosity towards others. Joe has been sober for a year and attends sessions of Alcoholics Anonymous. He also coaches the local soccer team composed of unemployed workers who have won only one game the entire year. When he meets Sarah, a social worker for the Health Department who is visiting Liam and his wife Sabine (Anne-Marie Kennedy) and young child, things start to look up. We do not learn much about Sarah's past but it is obvious that the two have discovered each other at a crucial point in their life.

In a powerful scene, Sarah asks Joe why he stopped drinking and he tells her how he had beaten a woman he was dating and has never forgiven himself. Both are very tentative about getting involved but they are also drawn to each other and can think about the future for the first time. Sadly, the world has other plans. Sabine is a heroin addict who used the drugs she was supposed to sell and is in serious debt to a local drug dealer McGowan (David Hayman), an old friend of Joe's. When the mobster boss demands that Liam cover his wife's debt or they will break his legs, Joe tries to moderate and ends up striking a deal with the mob, leading to a series of unfortunate events. In one of the most emotionally gripping scenes, Sarah berates Joe for lying to her and he responds "Some of us don't have a choice. Some of us don't have a f***ing choice." The mean streets of Ruchill are strewn with the results of urban decay and Loach does not spare us the details. He even mocks the image of bonnie Scotland with a scene involving a kilt-clad bagpiper playing the same three songs over and over for a group of tourists. Combining gritty realism with humor, My Name is Joe has an outstanding script by Paul Laverty and fully dimensional characters that transcend clichés. Loach does not pass judgment on his characters or directly condemn society for their failings. It is a work of compassion and humanity.

Joe (Peter Mullan) is a guy who has seen it all before. A former alcoholic, he kicked his habit. Now he is unemployed but is paradoxically very active since he trains a little football team and interests himself in young Liam who has a brush with the local underground for a story of unpaid drugs with his young spouse Sabine. He falls in love with Sarah, a social worker who brings them help and support. The two people fall in love whereas to help Liam, Joe is ready to break the law and to do shady jobs for the mobsters. Will his relationship with Sarah be affected by this?

When he places his camera in the popular neighborhoods of a big city eaten away by unemployment, Ken Loach is the defender of the outcasts who are very strongly linked by friendship and mutual support, like Joe here with his tiny football team. Loach refuses to feel pity for them and shots the outset of his film with energy and generosity. Where he also grabs the audience and impresses her is his master at supple cinematographic writing. "My Name is Joe" starts up first time with a humorist perspective that the filmmaker will try to keep to the maximum. You have to see Joe and his sidekick who pretend to be professional house painters to Sarah's. Then, as Liam and Sabine's trouble grow and with Joe's decision to help them, the tone becomes darker, blacker and is here to remind us that we are in Loach's universe. His characters in spite of their big efforts are caught up in a sad fate. In the end, Loach runs the whole gamut of tones with ability in a quite gloomy plot.

The arresting performance of Peter Mullan helps to make Loach's 1998 film more appealing and it's one to discover or rediscover.

In Glasgow, Joe Kavanagh (Peter Mullan, in a superb performance) is an ex-alcoholic and unemployed simple, but good man. He is the couch of a soccer team, formed by poor players. Joe meets Sarah Downie (Louise Goodall), a community health worker and they start a romance. Liam (David McKay) is a player in Joe's team and ex-addicted in drugs. He has a beautiful son, but his wife Sabine (Anne-Marie Kennedy) is still using drugs and raises a huge debt together with the local drug dealer McGowan (David Hayman). Joe becomes aware of the problem and McGowan offers four options: the debt of 2.000 pounds be paid, Sabine becomes a prostitute, Liam becomes a drug dealer or Joe makes two delivers of drugs for him. Joe accepts the last option, jeopardizing the love of Sarah for him. This very touching low budget movie is an authentic lesson to Hollywood personnel of `How to make an excellent movie having an outstanding director, a wonderful screenplay and marvelous cast'. The story is simple, very credible and with no concessions. The focus is part of the Scottish population that lives in poverty conditions and without many options in life, and it is painful. The end of the story will break the heart of the viewer: it is impossible not to be with wet eyes. The soundtrack suits perfectly to this film. My vote is nine.

Believe me as soon this movie has ended it will be damned difficult not to reach for your handkerchief and not to dry your eyes as this movie really touches you, and director Ken Loach doesn't even need no Titanic-script as according to his style he just picks out some stories of life. We are in Glasgow, Scotland at where we meet Joe (Peter Mullan), an ex-alcoholic who is on the dole and whose sole surviving point is the footballteam (that always loose) he manages. It's more friendship then football but out of a sudden he meets a nurse Sarah (Louise Goodall) and he falls in love. For Sarah it is quite difficult, she loves him but she can't get used to the world Joe lives in, a world that is dominated by poverty. Everything goes badly wrong when Joe decides to help one of his footballplayers Liam (David McKay) who is a junk and who is in the hands of the mob that are awaiting 2000 pounds from him. Little by little Joe is witnessing that he looses everything that he build up the day he said the bottle farewell. This is not Loach's most known film (I guess that is Raining Stones) but this movie really had its impact on the festival of Cannes and it made a sort of indiestar from actor Peter Mullan who recently made his debut as director making "The Magdalene Sisters". Along with Mike Leigh is Loach one of the best British directors ever, a film you absolutely must see!!!!

First this movie seems to be much lighter than previous Loach realisations (remember LadyBird, LadyBird ?). Joe is a hell of a good guy and the other characters are as true as possible. And it is truly funny (the football matches of the "German" team are hilarious). But then, like in many of the best Loach movies, the social reality, with all its dramatic aspects, turns the end of the movie into a real tragedy. A must, in my opinion.