Juventude Rebelde

Over the waters, it seems anyone not from England is in love with that wonderful Richard Curtis-like view of the globe, which is neither bad or drastically inaccurate, but covers a very small percentage of what life in the UK and particularly ordinary UK people are actually like.

Refreshingly comes "Kidulthood", an all too accurate if at times sensational version of average school-kids in London. We meet an assortment of characters, most of them only likable on a limited level, who's only motivation is to get through each day and fill the voids with partying, be it with drugs or sex, or petty crime. The film takes us through two days of their lives and how each character, be it the misguided Trife (Aml Ameen) or the sexually motivated Becky (Jamie Winstone) as well as others, on the day when a big party looms and the suicide of a classmate seems lurking in the background.

Growing up on a London housing estate and seeing the changes throughout the years has made me over-critical of films depicting this. The dialogue always being too polished or too neat, the accents as caricatured as Dick Van Dyke's cockney chimney sweep (the recent "Green Street" and anything Guy Ritchie suffered from this in spades) but refreshingly all this is absent here. The performances are very real, so real, that it would be easy to confuse them as weak, particularly with characters such as Claire, played pitch perfectly by Madeleine Fairley with her words always having that hollow ring of someone saying what everyone around her wants to hear, rather than what they're really thinking. The language is fluid and the style completely believable; this is an excellent window into an average group of modern teens, as depressing as that is to admit.

Marrying it to the excellent visual style and the lack of obvious moralising is both a strength and a weakness. Visually fast paced, using sliding split-screen and cinema scope, married to the creme of British gangster rap, this looks great, hiding it's indie roots and looking more like Steven Soderberg's 'Ocean's Eleven' than Larry Clark's 'Kids'. The pros of this are the audience it needs to reach will interpret this as 'cool' and maybe will end up seeing the characters as teen movie icons, more than stopping and thinking what the overall message is.

It's disturbing, mostly in small gestures rather than the grand shocking ones. A pretty teenage girl is bullied, punched with a bone shattering crunch as her attacker screams at her to pick up the ring that flew off her finger, Claire is intimidated by her boyfriend by him warning that he'll tell everyone she is a lousy lay (and that's the clean version) with personal hygiene issues, as she pathetically begs him to stop; it's certainly not a film for those seeking a rose-coloured view of society.

"Kidulthood" is a much needed reply to the belief that England is a pretty cool place and it's teens as going through a harmless phase. It is entertaining but without selling itself out, despite an ending thats a little too explosive to believe.

Not since Garly Oldman's 'Nil By Mouth' has a film seemed so richly realistic and it's to the director and the writer's credit that they have achieved this.

Whilst sad, it's not as 'slash your wrists' depressing as you might assume either; the power of the film is one that lingers after and hopefully it is that, that might reach to people not only affected by what they've seen but most of all identifying with it.

As a black girl living in London, I saw how this film portrayed real life. In the scenes at the beginning, in the school, I could relate fully to the events. People may not think that it truly represents black people, or schools in London, I beg to differ. You obviously have not been in a bad enough school. The language used in the film, the slang, is a part of life now. I look at schools on the telly and wish that I do not have to call everyone 'blud'. If I do not, I will get beaten up for 'trying to be white'. Kidulthood was a fantastic film, showing, yes, a different way of life, but a true representation of it. It was actually quite unnerving at how similar life is for my community to that of the film.

Kidulthood is an energetic snap shot of wasted youth in London that's flawed, but definitely interesting.

For the most part, the young cast (except for a very hammy jamie winstone) give strong, naturalistic performances-particularly noel clarke whos shocking turn as the local badman sam, will instantly make you forget clarkes "oafish boyfriend" routine on doctor who. What gives the performances a higher level of authenticity is the slang and profanity heavy dialogue that serves as an accurate representation of how the kids talk these days (you don't know how old i feel writing that!).

However the films mission to keep things as raw and gritty as possible ends up as its down fall- the script tries so hard to make the kids seem so reckless and hedonistic that the trouble they get into just gets unrealistic and shocking for the sake of being shocking after a while. Also, the story is very predictable- you will know how this one turns out , not even halfway through its running time .

Kidulthood doesn't come close to being as good as the likes of city of god or La haine, but its a well acted drama that I have to commend for trying to show a side of London that many other local films choose to ignore.

Like one of the other reviewers on this site I am going to vote 10 out of 10 for Kidulthood to try to redress the anomaly of its incredibly low score. Something is surely wrong with the IMDb system when most of the reviews on the site are positive yet the film has such a low rating. Anyway I thought Kidulthood was a very realistic 'urban streetkids' film which captured perfectly the style, speech and violence that happens every day around London's inner city schools. I thought the acting was absolutely fine especially considering the age of most of the actors - have those criticising the actors actually seen the way that teenage kids behave because I think they were all very believable. The film was tense, violent and gripping and is a nice London take on the issues of teenage gang violence.

I am not sure why this film is getting so many poor ratings. It is an excellent piece of film-making with a cracking script, fine performances and imaginative direction. A real eye opener that deserves a wide audience.

The movie has sparked some controversy in the UK for 'glorifying' the violence, sex and drugs portrayed but that is rubbish, this is essentially a deeply moral tale at heart.

Mark Kermode gave it a very sensible and measured review on his Radio 5 slot and I am in agreement with him.

I predict that a number of the actors in Kidulthood will go on to bigger things. A group of talent to watch.