Young Adam Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)March 29th, 2004
YOUNG ADAM
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: B
Sony Pictures Classics
Directed by: David Mackenzie
Written by: David Mackenzie, novel by Alexander Trocchi Cast: Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Peter Mullan, Emily Mortimer, Jack McElhone
Screened at: Sony, NYC, 3/25/04
Viewers at this generally absorbing film may be encouraged to pick up some of the works of Alexander Trocchi, whose book "Young Adam" has been adapted by writer-director David Mackenzie--thereby getting a taste of the novelist's "beat" prose style that has allowed critics to compare Trocchi to Burroughs (a poet featured in an upcoming documentary) and even Camus. "Young Adam" is about an alienated young man in the Glasgow of the 1950's who easily seduces women charmed by his James-Dean gaze, his ever-present cigarette giving his features the look of serious contemplation. The title character, played by the excellent Ewan McGregor (best known by a wide audience for his lead role in "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones"), is a fellow who despite his working-class, blue-collar background aspires to be a writer. His hopes for that noble but mostly ill-paying profession dashed, he is faced by a circumstance that requires an existential choice. Having discovered the floating body of a dead woman in Glaswegian waters, he could elect the moral option and offer the authorities his not-altogether-guilty, not-altogether-innocent role in her demise, thereby saving the life of a man accused of her murder. Or he can continue to drift from job to pick-up job, from woman to pick-up woman, smoking his cigarettes while looking oh-so- philosophical to those who know him no more than he knows himself.
At once a mystery and, more important, a look at the 1950's- style angst made chic by authors like Albert Camus, "Young Adam" centers on one Joe (Ewan McGregor), a drifter doing some temp work on a barge owned by an irritable, apparently sex-starved woman, Ella Gault (Tilda Swinton), who is married none too happily to Leslie Gault (Peter Mullan), and who is raising a young lad, Jim (Jack McElhone) on the boat that travels the Glasgow-Edinburgh circuit. Much of the film deals with Joe's memories of the scantily-clad woman, Cathie (Emily Mortimer), found face down in the river, with whom Joe had carried on an affair before he successfully employed his strong- silent-type charm on Leslie's wife.
"Young Adam" moves slowly, an introspective picture that tries and mostly succeeds to convey the laid-back style of the novelist. When the amoral Joe is not doing hard physical labor or pounding the keys of his typewriter which is most of the time he puffs away and busies himself with memories of his affairs, which were with women from a submerged socio- economic class who hook up with Joe almost from the moment they see him. The most involving affair is with Ella, partly because we see the frustrated wife and mother virtually asking to be caught in flagrante by her husband, partly because few actresses can match Tilda Swinton on any level.
The unrelenting gloomy atmosphere, punctuated by David Byrne's noirish score and Giles Nuttgens's photographic take on the Glaswegian milieu, can be difficult to take, but the story rewards by its careful unfolding of its principal character, director David Mackenzie burrowing deeply into Joe's rootless and conflicted disposition.
"Young Adam" was rated NC-17 by the MPAA, Sony's appeal having been turned down perhaps because the sexual activity, though nothing we haven't seen before in many an R-rated production, is without romance or passion, serving principally as an outlet for circumscribed human beings.
Rated NC-17. 100 minutes.(c) 2004 by Harvey Karten at
[email protected]
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
