Sweet Sixteen (Loach, 2002): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6pm
This is part of the 'Acting Hard' season at BFI Southbank, which explores representations of working-class masculinity in British cinema from the Thatcher era to the present day. This is a 35mm screening and the film is also being shown on September 25th. Details here.
Chicago Reader review:
Ken Loach’s 2002 feature
about a poor 15-year-old boy living in a seaside town in western
Scotland is a real heartbreaker; like The Bicycle Thief and
Rebel Without a Cause, it confronts the tragedy of someone
trying to be a good person who finds that the world he inhabits won’t
allow it. Liam (played by teenage soccer pro Martin Compston) has a
mother in prison; his sister loves him but can’t understand why he
gets into so many fights, just as his mother?s lover can’t
understand why he refuses to slip drugs to his mother. Paul Laverty’s
script, which won the best screenplay prize at Cannes, never
sentimentalizes Liam, yet it fully draws us into his world. I’m not
prone to like socially deterministic films of this kind, yet Loach is
so masterful at squeezing nuance and truth out of the form that I was
completely won over.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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