Capital Celluloid - Day 194: Friday July 15

Treacle Jr (Thraves, 2010): Clapham & Greenwich Picturehouse, All week

Stop press: since I posted this blog Sight & Sound magazine have made their review of the movie, which they made their film of the month,  available on the internet. You can access it here.

Jamie Thraves has made three critically acclaimed movies but has yet to have a breakthrough hit. He started with The Low Down (2000), a tale of Bohemian Londoners at the crossroads both in their personal and work lives which the Observer named among the "neglected masterpieces" of film history in its rundown of 50 Lost Movie Classics.

He then made The Cry Of The Owl (2009), an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's psychological thriller made in conjunction with BBC Films which had a limited release in this country but which again garnered excellent reviews. Here is John Gibbs' detailed take in the new web version of the influential Movie film journal.

Treacle Jr, which Thraves funded by mortgaging his house, got an airing at the London Film Festival in October and is now being shown by the Picturehouse group. Thraves' film has been picked up by Sight & Sound and is their film of the month in the August edition. Here is Adam Lee-Davies on the movie in Time Out:

"An electric performance by Aidan Gillen (reteaming with director Jamie Thraves for the first time since 2000’s ‘The Low Down’) is the cornerstone of this blackly funny but ultimately heartrending essay on loneliness and dependence that mixes the tender treatment of dysfunction of 'Rain Man' with the bleak urban redemption of ‘The Fisher King’. For reasons known only to himself, architect Tom (Tom Fisher) has abandoned his young family and taken to the streets of an anonymous south London where he forms a halting friendship with Gillen’s rambling half-witted naïf. As their bond deepens – thanks in part to a kitten named Treacle Jr – the story gravitates toward a conclusion that’s as hard won as it is inescapable. Funny, touching and gritty, this coolly rendered observation on need and rejection really is a Brit drama to shout about."

Here is the trailer.

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