Young Adam

Okay, this film isn't for everyone. A little dreary, a little bleak, and the love scenes weren't always attractive, but something in the dark simplicity got me.

McGregor is incredibly versatile, I didn't think once of the bohemian poet Christian, or of Obi Wan... he's taken on an unlikeable character with a slow moving plot and pulled it off beautifully.

Tilda Swinton plays the antithesis of a Hollywood seductress, which makes some of the love scenes uncomfortable, but refreshing. The acting, as a whole, is the entire film. The action between characters is subtle and intense, and although I may be biased as an Ewan fan, I thought it was perfect for a dark, rainy night!

One of the more quietly desperate films of recent past, Young Adam is an interesting study of lower working class characters - working poor, perhaps – set against an idyllic Scotland river life we have probably never seen. That working barges ply streams with bridges so narrow that crew must guide the craft along by kicking the tunnel-like sides of passage and canals and rivers are so pastorally picturesque is an awfully artful examination of a simpler time.

Joe (Ewan McGregor), a hired hand laboring on a barge-of-all-trades is the bad-boy promiscuous lover of any and all girls within contact. Torrid sex with any and all of them is his single-minded purpose, we gather at first. But we quickly find he 1.) is or was a writer – (failed or perhaps more correctly never-started) 2) is linked to a body found in a river and 3) is seemingly incapable of or devoid of emotion. But we are going to alter some our judgments of Joe as more is revealed.

Sexual promiscuity confined to abrupt, even relentless encounters is the main character's focus even though we know it is as unfeelingly given as it seems to be received. In one encounter, nearly violent in its depiction, we cannot see the face of his partner as she cries (or is she laughing?). Interestingly lit, we marvel at this singularly stark depiction of lust. Ella (Tilda Swinton) and her husband Les (Peter Mullan) have employed Joe on their barge and it is not long before we see how Joe has changed the dynamic in the marriage. It is with Les that Joe recovers the body of a woman floating in the river. Curiously Joe cannot manage the use of a boat hook to snare the woman's body; Les has to take over.

The story becomes one of determining who the woman is and how she fits into the story. Through flashbacks we see a disturbing development as as the police investigation of the dead woman ensues; we continue to follow this thread through the course of the film.

The music chosen for the film is unmemorable, but that may serve us well in that it is never a distraction. Time passes during the course of the story, but it could be a week, perhaps six months.

An interesting film, the title has been bandied about for its Biblical reference but reveals little about the matters at hand. In the final analysis the only surprise found in the movie is when a prominent figure merely disappears; consistent with the tempo, it is a profoundly quiet moment. Disturbing at every turn, this is a film charged with raw sexuality and should be seen to appreciate naturalistic film.

Young Adam is a powerful and atmospheric drama set on the canals between Glasgow and Edinburgh during the 1950s.

Ewan McGregor is Joe, a drifter working on a barge, when he and his boss find a body in the canal. As he begins an affair with the bargeman's wife (Tilda Swinton), we find out more about his previous relationship with the drowned woman (Emily Mortimer).

Adapted from the novel by Scottish Beat writer Alexander Trocchi, Young Adam is, in some ways, a kitchen sink drama – a vivid picture of working class life in its unpleasant reality. One of the best examples of this type of film is Room at the Top (1959). But Young Adam has existentialist overtones: Joe is alienated and passive, and not only do his numerous sexual couplings offer him little pleasure, but in rejecting the only thing that could redeem him, he condemns himself to a meaningless life. This might sound too depressing, but screenwriter and director David Mackenzie gives the film great depth and sensuality. Very interesting. ****/***** stars.

Who is Alexander Trocchi? He's the author of a Brit Beat cult novel called Young Adam and a fascinating figure of whose writing William S. Burroughs once said `He has been there and brought it all back.' Fledgling Scottish director David Mackenzie has brought it all back to the screen, having performed the difficult feat of getting adequate funds to film Young Adam and gathered an able cast headed by Ewan MacGregor, Tilda Swinton, and Peter Mullen to act in it.

A worthwhile project and a logical one for those involved. It makes sense that MacGregor of Trainspotting and Shallow Grave and Mullen of Trainspotting should try to jumpstart British cinema again by bringing this bold forgotten classic set in Scotland to the screen. The result may not be a revolution, but it's a good watch, a beautiful dark lusty little movie with some rare nooks and crannies to it.

Indeed it was Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh who spearheaded the revival of interest in Trocchi and his novel. Glasgow-born Trocchi (who died in '84) spent so many years as a wild drug intellectual figurehead in Paris, the US, and England that people had pretty much forgotten he'd been a good writer admired for his style and his "sexistential" plots.

Besides being a heroin-opium-cocaine-marijuana addict, pimp, magazine editor, translator and rare book seller who never gave up the wan hope that he'd do some good writing again, Trocchi once also penned pornography for cash. His own lust sticks out all over this story, as does his freewheeling sensualist nihilism.

The sexually predatory Joe (MacGregor) is a failed writer with a dark secret who's run off to become a hired hand on a barge running coal along the Forth and Clyde canal between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Ella Gault -- a typically powerful, merciless role for the bold and talented Swinton -- is the barge owner, often contemptuous of her husband Les (Peter Mullen). It's obvious Joe and Ella are going to be between the sheets in short order. We suspect also that as in Jean Vigo's classic Parisian barge film L'Atalante, somebody's going to have to leave. The small world is made even smaller by the presence of a son, `the kid' Jim (Jack McElhone) who peeks through cracks to see the humping. This is the Kitchen Sink School of adultery.

Before long Les gets the picture and moves off, but we know from flashbacks and concurrent affairs that Joe is a stranger to commitment. Eventually it emerges that he knew a lot more than he said about the body of the girl in the slip he and Les fished out of the canal at the movie's outset. The story that unfolds about that body and its owner is a huge example of Joe's endless capacity for non-commitment. Could it be there's more than a little of Alexander Trocchi in Joe Taylor? You bet. But Joe's a pre-drug Trocchi whose only substances are the alcohol he gets in pubs and the cigarettes he always has dangling from his mouth.

The lusty nihilism of this story may owe something to Henry Miller, but it's more usually described as a sensual and earthy version of Camus's The Stranger, and like The Stranger, Young Adam has a trial at the end (it seems somewhat patched in, and it is – it's not in the book). Joe experiences greater priapic pleasure than Camus's Meursault. He doesn't seem to get a lot of fun out of it, though. He's a failed author making it with every woman who comes along to forget his writer's block and his guilt. He's a handsome, sexy devil who doesn't so much seduce women as look them in the eye and wait to pounce. It's hard to see how anybody else could be better than Ewan McGregor in this role. Working on home turf again for a change -- like Colin Farrell in the casual, quick-witted recent Irish film Intermission -- MacGregor has never looked or acted better. Swinton, Mullen, and Emily Mortimer (as the former girlfriend) are equally good.

Mackenzie's postwar Glasgow canal world is an authentic-feeling place where the interiors are chiaroscuro and exteriors bleached out and tinged with yellow. The shots are often striking in unexpected ways. The trouble with the movie is it isn't emotionally affecting. The wild sex scenes – including the notorious ketchup rape -- are no more than bodies rudely colliding. There's more beauty in the arch of McGregor's eyebrows or the rust of a barge in the late sunlight. There's a grimy glamour also to the barge interiors, the luminous air of the pubs, canalside humps and slick dark streets; but the hero's aimlessness destroys momentum and the movie fizzles out at the end.

As Joe drifts through Young Adam the present is mixed with the flashbacks of an equally aimless past and things get a bit confusing. There isn't any of the acid trip intensity (and ultimate clarity) of Cronenberg's brilliant Spider and the pace drags at times. Let's hope Mackenzie's work on his next movie pans out: it's an adaptation of Spider author Patrick McGrath's novel Asylum. His first movie was a fiasco. This interesting effort is his second. With luck he may make another leap forward next time.

What an emotionless portrayal of an emotionless man. Ewan yet again proves that he is a force in both the Hollywood community and in the independent forum. Not only for having the bravery to go against American cliché and fight to keep his full frontal nudity in the film, but also for having the gumption to take this role. This is not your average character. Joe is not your normal 'hero'. In fact, I would go so far as to say that he represents all of us. He is, sadly, our 'hero'. Joe (and Ewan portrays this perfectly) is constantly looking for happiness and acceptance, but somehow cannot find it due to the sexual urges that he has. It is interesting to see him want to have emotion, but yet have no issues with sleeping with another man's wife. This is a story of maturity for Joe, but sadly we do not ever see it. When I was watching this film I was continually thinking of the film Alfie (not the new release, but the older) in which a man embarks on several relationships and ultimately ends up with nothing. That is very similar to the story that we have here, only Young Adam is much grittier and darker … and, well, more explicit.

So many times in cinema we watch two actors give heartbreaking performances on screen, but just do not have the chemistry needed to really pull together those intense sex scenes. That is not the case here. The chemistry and raw emotion between Ewan and Tilda Swinton is phenomenal. I have not seen a better match up in cinema in a long time. This successfully added that extra intensity to their moments of glory. I was able to feel and see their emotion and passion for each other on the screen. It was exactly what this film needed to reach the next level.

I know this story is based off a book, but I felt that director David Mackenzie did a fantastic job of setting the mood and the scenes. He amazingly built this sense of claustrophobia that surrounded Joe from not only inside the boat, but also under the truck and in the second apartment. There was even that feeling at the trial. This claustrophobia is one of the reasons why Joe never stays in one place for very long. While some will argue that he is nothing more than a heartless womanizer and a coward, I saw him as a tragic spirit searching for the lifelong happiness that he could never find. His conscious was too heavy on him to ever find that perfect place. Mackenzie allowed Ewan to find this character, and this powerful drama was transformed well into the screen.

Finally, I would like to add that Ewan would not have been worth seeing in this film if it wasn't for the impressive Tilda Swinton who is seemingly in everything lately and gives nothing less than 110%. I have not seen anything that she has been in that was anything below good. She is our next Oscar winner and one of those actresses that are not afraid to get dirty. Her portrayal of Ella is no different. While others would have simply just played the part, Swinton creates the part and gives this film the backbone that it deserves. She nearly steals every scene from Ewan, and that is impressive.

Overall, Young Adam is a deeply disturbing and depressing film that is not for everyone, but will be enjoyed by those that are fans of this genre.

Grade: **** out of *****