Ken Loach's 1991 film Riff-Raff is his sole collaboration with scriptwriter Bill Jesse, who died before the film - apparently the only one he wrote - was completed. Jesse was a former construction worker whose experiences informed his script, and it's easy to see why it appealed to Loach, since the film shows him at his most left-wing.
Riff-Raff follows Robert Carlyle's Stevie, a Glaswegian criminal recently released from prison and sleeping rough in London. He gets a job on a building site and befriends - amongst other people - Ricky Tomlinson's builder Ricky and as the film unfolds we see the trials and tribulations he and his fellow workers face, as he struggles to make ends meet, faces outrageously unfair (and now illegal) abuse of workers' rights, and deals with challenges in his personal life. There's a sense that Jesse was largely just writing about his own experiences, and that whilst he may have had an axe to grind, his objection to poor treatment workers evolved naturally out of his own time spent working in construction. Thus, the characterisation is often largely observational, and there's a great deal of humour peppered throughout the script, with Willie Ross getting all the best lines as merciless site manager Gus Siddon, who is indiscriminate in its desire to fire his workers. In the film's best known seen, Larry is found naked in the bath in the show flat when three Arab women - potential buyers - are shown round, whilst the scene with of Stevie's mother's ashes being scattered is also one of the film's genuinely funny moments.
But Loach by contrast grinds his axe hard and it's often quite wearying, even if his points are valid. His direction works against the matter-of-fact, almost philosophical nature of the script and threatens - not quite successfully - to turn Jesse's often witty, frequently moving story into a grindingly depressing tale of oppressed working classes, heroin and near-death due to dodgy scaffolding. Notably, whilst Jesse's screenplay documents petty criminality that he probably witnessed and may even have taken part in, Loach encourages performances from his actors that suggest that he thinks criminal behaviour is justified, as long as it is committed by poor working classes with socialist leanings - thus, the arson attack at the end is framed as an example of triumphant just desserts.
Nevertheless, whilst the visions of the director and the writer don't entirely elide, the end result largely works well. Loach's unswerving mission to condemn Thatcher's Britain results in a realistic grittiness that enhances a film in which, for the most part, the emphasis is on characterisation rather than plot. Thus, the audience is invited to sympathise with Stevie when his relationship with Emer McCourt's Susan - which begins after he finds and returns her handbag - spirals into disaster when she ends up developing a heroin addiction and abruptly vanishes from both the story and his life. Likewise, it is hard not be outraged when Larry is sacked out of hand for requesting safety glasses for the workers, rather than his various undiscovered transgressions, including stealing gas from the mains on the building site. Jesse let us get to know these characters for better or for worse; we like Larry, because he defends Susan when she's cruelly mocked by her audience when singing in the local pub. As good as the performances of Carlyle and McCourt are, the film's best moments are when their characters are emoting, but when less prominent characters are having small, believable conversations. And in one case, these have a dramatic pay off, when Desmonde - who talks occasionally through the film about his desire to visit Africa - is left with what look like, at the very least, life-changing injuries.
It looks great too. Loach's politics often distract from his skills behind the camera, but his habit of shooting on location, with a cinematographer who gets what he wants to achieve (in this case Barry Ackroyd, in the first of their many collaborations), is a much responsible for the realistic feel of the film as Jesse's script and the cast members' acting. And the acting is excellent, whether from familiar faces Carlyle and Tomlinson (like Jesse, a former builder, an experience he undoubtedly brought to the role) or the many less well-known actors that Loach often casts in his films. The flaws here are the incidental score by Stewart Copeland of The Police, which is striking but occasionally intrusive and hasn't aged well, and the melodramatic climax, something that Loach has fallen foul of in his several of his otherwise excellent films, including My Name is Joe. Despite this, fans of Loach will be satisfied, but even those whose political views don't align with his should be able to appreciate the qualities of Riff-Raff.
Riff-Raff follows Robert Carlyle's Stevie, a Glaswegian criminal recently released from prison and sleeping rough in London. He gets a job on a building site and befriends - amongst other people - Ricky Tomlinson's builder Ricky and as the film unfolds we see the trials and tribulations he and his fellow workers face, as he struggles to make ends meet, faces outrageously unfair (and now illegal) abuse of workers' rights, and deals with challenges in his personal life. There's a sense that Jesse was largely just writing about his own experiences, and that whilst he may have had an axe to grind, his objection to poor treatment workers evolved naturally out of his own time spent working in construction. Thus, the characterisation is often largely observational, and there's a great deal of humour peppered throughout the script, with Willie Ross getting all the best lines as merciless site manager Gus Siddon, who is indiscriminate in its desire to fire his workers. In the film's best known seen, Larry is found naked in the bath in the show flat when three Arab women - potential buyers - are shown round, whilst the scene with of Stevie's mother's ashes being scattered is also one of the film's genuinely funny moments.
But Loach by contrast grinds his axe hard and it's often quite wearying, even if his points are valid. His direction works against the matter-of-fact, almost philosophical nature of the script and threatens - not quite successfully - to turn Jesse's often witty, frequently moving story into a grindingly depressing tale of oppressed working classes, heroin and near-death due to dodgy scaffolding. Notably, whilst Jesse's screenplay documents petty criminality that he probably witnessed and may even have taken part in, Loach encourages performances from his actors that suggest that he thinks criminal behaviour is justified, as long as it is committed by poor working classes with socialist leanings - thus, the arson attack at the end is framed as an example of triumphant just desserts.
Nevertheless, whilst the visions of the director and the writer don't entirely elide, the end result largely works well. Loach's unswerving mission to condemn Thatcher's Britain results in a realistic grittiness that enhances a film in which, for the most part, the emphasis is on characterisation rather than plot. Thus, the audience is invited to sympathise with Stevie when his relationship with Emer McCourt's Susan - which begins after he finds and returns her handbag - spirals into disaster when she ends up developing a heroin addiction and abruptly vanishes from both the story and his life. Likewise, it is hard not be outraged when Larry is sacked out of hand for requesting safety glasses for the workers, rather than his various undiscovered transgressions, including stealing gas from the mains on the building site. Jesse let us get to know these characters for better or for worse; we like Larry, because he defends Susan when she's cruelly mocked by her audience when singing in the local pub. As good as the performances of Carlyle and McCourt are, the film's best moments are when their characters are emoting, but when less prominent characters are having small, believable conversations. And in one case, these have a dramatic pay off, when Desmonde - who talks occasionally through the film about his desire to visit Africa - is left with what look like, at the very least, life-changing injuries.
It looks great too. Loach's politics often distract from his skills behind the camera, but his habit of shooting on location, with a cinematographer who gets what he wants to achieve (in this case Barry Ackroyd, in the first of their many collaborations), is a much responsible for the realistic feel of the film as Jesse's script and the cast members' acting. And the acting is excellent, whether from familiar faces Carlyle and Tomlinson (like Jesse, a former builder, an experience he undoubtedly brought to the role) or the many less well-known actors that Loach often casts in his films. The flaws here are the incidental score by Stewart Copeland of The Police, which is striking but occasionally intrusive and hasn't aged well, and the melodramatic climax, something that Loach has fallen foul of in his several of his otherwise excellent films, including My Name is Joe. Despite this, fans of Loach will be satisfied, but even those whose political views don't align with his should be able to appreciate the qualities of Riff-Raff.