Back_Row_Babe

The tragedy of films like this is that they won't get an airing before a popular audience in the English-speaking world. Because this can teach the Hollywood formula film a thing or two about keeping an audience enthralled.

The really strange thing is, that not much actually happens. And when something actually does happen, you feel something like a jolt of high-voltage electricity jagging through the audience (this is also a reminder of how films are meant to be seen by an audience, not in the comfort of one's own home - it's a shared experience and it pays off a treat here.) Georges is a cerebral TV presenter. His wife Anne is in publishing. They have a talented son and life is beautiful until somebody starts sending them videos, and this terrorises the family and tears it apart. Yet each of them, in their own way, is used to being watched as part of their everyday life. So where does the hidden menace come from? And what secret lurks in Georges's past? On the way we are reminded of the less-than-savoury history of France's relationship with its erstwhile Algerian colony, and of present-day conflicts with the Arab world. Can this hold the key? I doubt if this will be showing at your local multiplex. but if you get a chance to track it down, I heartily recommend that you do so.

~

I saw this first at the Watershed in Bristol, a celebration of that city's twinning arrangement with the Nicaraguan town of Puerto Morazan. The town had just been devastated by Hurricane Mitch and the ensuing floods, yet the resourceful people of Morazan had emerged from the disaster without loss of life, and yet again they got on with their lives. They are used to this, after generations of bouncing back from flood, volcano, earthquake, military dictatorship and the hegemony of the global megacorporations backed by the US government. And their representatives tell us that Ken Loach's film gives their small voice a hearing.

This is my favourite amongst Loach's films. It combines its political message - an important one - with comedy and a touching love story. It should be better known.