‘Riff-Raff’ (NR)

"Riff-Raff" is a rabble-rousing satire of Thatcher's England in which director Ken Loach discovers the power of laughter, not only as a filmmaker's tool but as his protagonists' salvation. They are an exuberant surrogate family of blue-collar laborers in the process of converting a dilapidated North London hospital into a complex of luxury condominiums. The characters, acted by a cast of pros and amateurs, were created by screenwriter Bill Jesse, a construction worker who died before ever seeing them come to life.

A staunch friend of the working man, Loach has long decried the inequities of the British class system in dramas and documentaries hailed variously for their poignancy, their power and their realism. A few of the director's works, such as "Wednesday's Child" and "Hidden Agenda," have been released in this country, but most -- "Kes," "The Gamekeeper," "Poor Cow" etc. -- are left to festivals and retrospectives. Typically his films are about the common man but hardly accessible to him, especially if he is an American brought up on Horatio Alger.

Given Loach's involvement, there are political overtones and undertones and straight-out editorializing, which serve as scaffolding for Jesse's paean to the camaraderie that sustains the men. It's comedy with a good solid whack to it, raunchy and realistic, for Jesse, poor sod, knew a thing or two about sucking plaster dust and hauling rubble.

The film deals with all the daily grind, but its grander, by no means subtle theme is an insanely ironic one. The workers, most of them homeless, are providing residences for people who doubtless already have a manor house in Devonshire or a getaway cottage in Wales.

An itinerant polyglot crew hailing from Liverpool, Glasgow and the West Indies, they follow the jobs. They speak in accents so varied and thick that the film comes with subtitles that also translate the slang for American audiences. None of the men seems bothered by their differences in creed or argot, united as they are by their loneliness and limited means.

Although it has the feel of an ensemble piece, the film focuses on Stevie (Robert Carlyle), a Scottish ex-con who is befriended by Larry (Ricky Tomlinson), an outspoken advocate of workers' rights and the film's social conscience. The big-hearted bloke helps Stevie locate and fix up a "squat," an abandoned apartment that becomes a pleasant enough home with a bit of cleaning, cheap furniture and paint.

Stevie's life takes a surprisingly happy turn when he meets Susan (piquant Emer McCourt), an aspiring singer who couldn't carry a tune in a tea cozy. The emotionally troubled, rather lazy lass seems exotic to Stevie with her love of horoscopes and health food, and he soon invites her to live with him. They're given a helping hand by Stevie's jolly mates, who help move Susan's furnishings into his squat, but their dream of a new life together fades as her high spirits decay.

Stevie has little patience with her moods. "Depression is for the middle class. The rest of us get an early start in the morning," he observes. And that brings us back to the socialist crux of the film: the limited horizons of the proletariat, seen here as far savvier than their supervisors, who are most often found sitting on their bums wondering whatever happened to the working class anyway.

Loach, who sees the building site as a ramshackle metaphor for what ails the Sceptered Isle, overdoes the rat references, but he never quite clambers onto the soapbox. This is more of a riff than a rap, more in keeping with the Marx Brothers than the Marxists.

"Riff-Raff" is not rated but contains profanity and drug use.