Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 299: Tue Oct 28

Riff-Raff (Loach, 1991): Garden Cinema, 3.30pm

A lesser-known Ken Loach work perhaps but a very underrated movie which is typical of the director in that it is both funny and tragic in equal amounts. The story of a group of men on a London building site, this has the mark of authenticity that comes from being written by an ex-labourer.

Rarely screened and well worth checking out if you are a fan of Loach's work. Starring Robert Carlyle and Ricky Tomlinson (with a superb joke concerning a Turkish bazaar). This is part of the Loach retrospective at the Garden Cinema. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Ken Loach, perhaps the last unreconstructed English realist (Kes, Land and Freedom), takes a funky, intermittently comic, and generally uncompromisingly grim look at a group of men on a London building crew, placing particular emphasis on a young man from Glasgow and his affair with an aspiring singer (1991). Using actors experienced in construction, Loach shot on an actual building site complete with rats. Written by the late Bill Jesse, a former laborer himself, this film has a gritty authenticity about English working-class life that makes even Mike Leigh seem like a bit of an artificer. With Robert Carlyle and Emer McCourt. Recommended.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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