"Did I give a monkeys
Did I f*ck
I did not give a toss." Joe (Peter Mullan) exclaims to his AA meeting.
Loach, along with Mike Leigh and Alan Bennett, is Britain's finest social commentator, and here he is at his uncompromising best. Searing, emotional, gritty, of course, and this time marvellously romantic and cohesive too.
Set in a Glasgow landscape not a million miles away from the most deprived areas of Eastern Europe, unemployed Joe (Mullan, who deservedly won the best actor prize at Cannes) is a recovering alcoholic who spends his evenings at AA meetings and his afternoons coaching football with his mates Liam (David McKay) and Shanks (Gary Lewis). The football team shenanigans provide the film with its premium comic moments:
"I've been Franz Beckenbauer for f***ing years by the way," exclaims Joe's bald forward. "If you're Franz Beckenbauer, I'm the tooth fairy," counters the referee.
A group of men acting like boys, swearing over each other, playing hopeless football and resorting to stealing a new Brazilian kit - their scenes are very reminiscent of Loach's Raining Stones.
The main storyline concerns Joe's love of Sarah (Louise Goodall), and their entanglement with Liam and his heroin-addicted wife. Full of vitality but long unattached, Joe is drawn to Sarah a health worker for social services, but hesitates to ask her out: "Here I am just getting my act together, off the juice, the first peace of mind in years, bloody hell, what happens ambushed by a woman!", he exclaims.
My Name Is Joe's core is unbearably moving and tender. The bonding between Joe and Sarah is mature, witty, realistic and far better than anything Hollywood has produced in over thirty years. Two superb leading performances.
However, the sweetness soon gets kicked aside by a series of seemingly unstoppable and depressing events, which Joe finds himself bound to. As he pleads to Sarah, "I didn't have a F***ING choice." Loach is saying that none of these people have a choice in this Dickensian landscape bereft of jobs.
My Name is Joe is about dependence, redemption, shame, poverty, disgust, violence and ultimately, loneliness. It doesn't possess the glamorous tint of Small Faces or Trainspotting, but it does have the best performance this year. From Peter Mullan. Fabulous.
Ben Walsh
Loach, along with Mike Leigh and Alan Bennett, is Britain's finest social commentator, and here he is at his uncompromising best. Searing, emotional, gritty, of course, and this time marvellously romantic and cohesive too.
Set in a Glasgow landscape not a million miles away from the most deprived areas of Eastern Europe, unemployed Joe (Mullan, who deservedly won the best actor prize at Cannes) is a recovering alcoholic who spends his evenings at AA meetings and his afternoons coaching football with his mates Liam (David McKay) and Shanks (Gary Lewis). The football team shenanigans provide the film with its premium comic moments:
"I've been Franz Beckenbauer for f***ing years by the way," exclaims Joe's bald forward. "If you're Franz Beckenbauer, I'm the tooth fairy," counters the referee.
A group of men acting like boys, swearing over each other, playing hopeless football and resorting to stealing a new Brazilian kit - their scenes are very reminiscent of Loach's Raining Stones.
The main storyline concerns Joe's love of Sarah (Louise Goodall), and their entanglement with Liam and his heroin-addicted wife. Full of vitality but long unattached, Joe is drawn to Sarah a health worker for social services, but hesitates to ask her out: "Here I am just getting my act together, off the juice, the first peace of mind in years, bloody hell, what happens ambushed by a woman!", he exclaims.
My Name Is Joe's core is unbearably moving and tender. The bonding between Joe and Sarah is mature, witty, realistic and far better than anything Hollywood has produced in over thirty years. Two superb leading performances.
However, the sweetness soon gets kicked aside by a series of seemingly unstoppable and depressing events, which Joe finds himself bound to. As he pleads to Sarah, "I didn't have a F***ING choice." Loach is saying that none of these people have a choice in this Dickensian landscape bereft of jobs.
My Name is Joe is about dependence, redemption, shame, poverty, disgust, violence and ultimately, loneliness. It doesn't possess the glamorous tint of Small Faces or Trainspotting, but it does have the best performance this year. From Peter Mullan. Fabulous.
Ben Walsh