Mischief Night

This is such a brilliant film. Funny, fresh and honest. Set somewhere in northern england it charts the lives of two families, the Khans and the Crabtree's. Their worlds are divided by a Park set between the two streets they live in. But the script tackles some provocative issues that are very much relevant to a society where diversity is not always welcomed. It's witty, brilliantly acted and the cast are both professional and locally cast. Though you'd never know which is which. The film is directed with great assurance and control by Penny Woolcock who also wrote the script. You sense a real respect from her about the characters in her story and there is nothing patronising about the community she writes about. Just great humanity. There is nothing formulaic about it and it is always surprising in it's inventiveness. A terrific watch. Photography by Robbie Ryan (a talent to watch out for) is full of energy and flair.

A great film, offering a slice of life in present-day Leeds that most of us would rather not know about. The plot is almost incidental. The film's success lies in the portraits of the two families, one native white, the other second-generation Pakistani and their complex love-hate relationships. Kelly Hollis is superb as the gutsy single mother with three kids by different fathers, coping on her own with the racial antagonisms that have blown up in Leeds since her own childhood.

The flimsy storyline follows the youngest lad as he and his mates prepare for Mischief Night, when children (or at least white children in Yorkshire) are allowed to create havoc by playing tricks on adults. The more subtle interactions are in the Pakistani community, where the older daughter is resisting an arranged marriage, the older son cannot communicate with his Pakistani wife except by meeting her incessant demands for sex, and the local drug dealer is hired to sort out the Jihadi extremists.

The characters are for the most part grotesque, but with enough humour - the dialogue is particularly strong in every sense - to make them both watchable and believable. The acting is splendid, especially by the youngsters, and the visual portraits of the streets and houses of the two communities are vibrant. A bleak but absorbing, funny and eventually heart-warming film.

The week running up to Halloween in a rundown Leeds estate sees Mischief Night looming as a time when everyone can get into harmless bad behaviour. However on the estate bad behaviour is a constant state – ranging from the anti-social actions to children to the violent rule of drug dealers. On either side of the segregated estate, two families live out their week against the constant stress of conflict and day-to-day living.

The title and the opening credits suggested that this film would be sort of East is East comedy affair – y'know, based on a serious drama plot but with a genial air to it. That this was not to be the case is not the problem though and I didn't wander into the film expecting it to be what I had assumed and criticising it for being something else. I say this because there is a problem with what the film is and I don't want you to think that my opinions stems from me assuming it was something it was not. The problem is that it never really decides what it wants to do and tries to have comedy, drama, tragedy, relationship strife, drugs, paedophilia and general crime. That it tries to cover all this is an ambition that I won't criticise for no reason but it is a hard task to pull off and in this case the failure to make it work leaves a disjointed and uneven film that at times is really good and at others just doesn't work in any way.

To her credit Penny Woolcock seems to be trying to capture life on the estate with ups and downs of all extremes and, as a Wire fan I'm fine with something that has a bit of depth and mixes all the emotions of real life. Thing is, she cannot make it work and the end result is something that has a comic tone when the subject matter is serious and it just doesn't blend the way she would like it to. This makes it feel really odd and uneven and prevented me caring about what was happening because it didn't seem real – not because I didn't buy the base world of the estate (these places are in all cities) or the extremes of the week (it is part of narrative convenience to condense things) but mainly because Woolcock's comic air takes away from the realism that she should have injected. The ending is where all this collapses in on itself – I'll not do anything to spoil it but it is undeservedly pat for what it is.

I'm not sure where the problems come from. As writer and director one has to assume that it is all down to Woolcock for creating something that doesn't function but I do wonder if someone has taken her in hand and tried to shift her vision into something else. I'm being generous to suggest this as I have no basis, but the unsuccessful blend of styles does feel like a dramatic film that has been spread into a comedy with lots of music and bright colours into the cinematography. I'm not sure but wherever it came from, it is here and it jus doesn't fly. A shame really because at times it is an interesting film but for the vast majority it just doesn't.

The cast are lumbered with this but mostly they do OK despite the characters handed to them to carry off. Nobody was bad, but some struggled to make their characters work and ended up just going with the weird flow around them. So, what does that leave Mischief Night as? Well it is a mix between Kidulthood, Adulthood and East is East with a bit more comedy thrown in. The blend is difficult to pull off and Woolcock cannot manage to make it happen, leaving a film that is serious but never lets you take it seriously while also being a comedy that never makes you laugh all reliant on a character-driven narrative where you're never really with the characters. Has its moments but doesn't make anything of them.

For the information of the poster who asked. Mischief Night. A British tradition on Halloween before the more recent invasion of the appallingly PC and American sickly sweet "Trick or Treat" aberration. In which no doors were knocked on except with the intention of running away before they were answered, garden gnomes moved gardens, washing (if anyone was daft enough to leave it out) hung from trees in the company of toilet rolls, fireworks were set off early in privet hedges or outside toilet pans, black bin liners were stuck over the outside of peoples windows with news sheets posted about the end of the world coming tomorrow morning and door handles at the front and back became linked with washing line. You couldn't buy off mischiefers with treats you either went to bed hoping for the best, sat listening behind your door with a rolled up newspaper ready to give chase or you were out perpetrating mischief. A time before weed had killed energy and creativity in British youth along with the ability to persevere in difficult circumstances that weren't brought on by your parent/s (people often had two in those days) needing to live an "Eastenders" life. The sort of Eastenders life in fact, fairly roughly but honestly portrayed in this depressing comedy. Not that it doesn't have many funny moments but overall the life being led by the white family in this film is close enough to reality for anyone who deals with todays young people to know that there isn't any escape from it. Rather like the far funnier but equally hopeless "Royal Family" it ridicules a reality which has been encouraged by a well-meaning nanny state with no apparent clue as to what constantly supporting people in their mistakes and inadequacy does to their self worth. Uplifting to some effect but that's the only part (as with Heavens Above starring Peter Sellers) that fails to ring true.

Within Mischief Night actually lies a pretty darned good idea and an approach from a director I feel is more than competent. After having seen the film, I learnt that it was a part of two others thus forming a trilogy which led me to my suspicions that director Penny Woolcock is a competent enough director. Woolcock knows what she wants out of actors and knows how to create a sense of happening on screen. I read that in the prior film to this entitled 'Tina Takes a Break', the protagonist of the film is caught robbing money for a trip to pay for her and her kids – the kids get the money and with Tina away in jail, they get a holiday parent-free.

Such a juxtaposition to have kids away from their parents but enjoying themselves in the manner kids do. I just wonder what Tina must've thought whilst being away from her children so long: her anguish clashing with her kid's delight. If it's anything to go by, Mischief Night achieves a similar juxtaposition and director Woolcock has matured over time; either that or she's just braver, because now in this film, she's looking at interracial relationships and friendships; opening up an entirely different can of worms.

But rather than have a separation from loved ones, the film partly focuses on children as an innocent and eager bunch out to cause mischief on something known as 'Mischief Night'. The film is another juxtaposition of ideas, with one boy in debt to a drug dealer and having to act on a whim in order to repay him and save his own skin. The happy, cheerful and quite innocent story of three young kids gearing up to cause mischief is clashed once again with the dreary and somewhat awkward at times drug dealing fable.

I think for the most part, Mischief Night works but I couldn't help but wonder how brilliant it could've been. There's a potential here. If you're like me and you cannot help but marvel at multi-strand, potentially long and complicated, perhaps drawn out crime sagas about lowlifes and characters as real as possible then chances are you'll get some kicks out of Mischief Night. But part of the reason it's not brilliant is its grounded and fun roots twinned with an innocent core. I cannot help but wonder how brilliant it might have been had it been a bit more, well, 'pulpy'.

But of course this is just an opinion although I'll try to state my case. Some of the moments when you genuinely feel a reaction within your body to an image or scene on screen in this film arrives in the form of a neighbour who's potentially a little too friendly as his silhouette fills the window after he spots a couple of children playing with a train-set oddly placed in his greenhouse. Another instance occurs in which someone of an immature mentality has built-up such a hatred towards another that they've got their hands on a gun and are willing to do the deed. One other running story involves a young kid on the verge of hopefully finding some sort of career but is mixing with people of a criminal mindset.

So the material is there but of course, the film cannot help but stay rooted. The ominous guy in his doorway idea is not played out in a particularly good or clever manner when something much more dramatic would've sufficed; incidentally a film that was released shortly before, entitled Running Scared, dealt with a similar set up and identified its pulpy roots and played the scene out better. Woolcock identifies the road of crime fiction but doesn't go down it. If she does, then she goes half way down before turning back and getting back to the beginning again but deliberately so.

The darker and more ominous scenes occur in a gloomy park late in the evening where Asif (Akhtar) must deal in drugs to repay a debt he owes to Qassim (Simpson) following an incident with his car. The atmosphere is distinctive in its change and comes as a welcome break from the colourful, bright and upbeat scenes of kids being told 'Never to go to death row' (which is a street full of relatively unkind neighbours) but naturally, they go anyway. Unfortunately, death row includes the sorts of people such as lesbians and such, needlessly discriminating a certain group for the sake of potential antagonism to the boys.

Other than all this, the film is a hybrid of crime; comedy and of coming of age. Young eyes and minds will come to learn of interracial friendships or relationships and others will build the courage to go against type and learn of individuality. Woolcock puts an interesting spin on most things, the fact the female is the aggressor in the family very early on as the husband cowers and calls for help; something you certainly couldn't see happening in films such as Nil By Mouth. Woolcock also taps into life in Leeds as a whole, having one character bellow to others as well as the audience the limited prospects and the increase in foreigners. While Mischief Night is not brilliant, it still could well have been; but I think Penny Woolcock made the film she set out to make and that in itself usually garners some commendation.