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'Joe': Love & Reality in Glasgow
By Rita Kempley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 5, 1999
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An unlikely romance develops between Louise Goodall and Peter Mullan in "My Name Is Joe."
(Artisan Entertainment)
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Director:
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Kenneth Loach
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Cast:
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Peter Mullan;
Louise Goodall;
David McKay;
Anne-Marie Kennedy;
David Hayman |
Running Time:
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1 hour, 48 minutes
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Profanity, violence, sexuality and drug use
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Broken blokes, used-up lasses and their wee, wailing babes struggle against joblessness, drug addiction and other social ills in British filmmaker Ken Loach's gritty, perennially political films. A modern-day Dickens, Loach has devoted his career to addressing the sorry lot of the lower classes and society's indifference toward the working man.
"My Name Is Joe," filmed in one of Glasgow's poorest neighborhoods, bears all the hallmarks of the independent director's work ("Riff-Raff," "Hidden Agenda"), yet it also has the breezy air of a romantic comedy. Don't be fooled by first impressions.
Although Loach has compassion for his characters, his vision is unsentimental, uncompromising. Writer Paul Laverty, in his second collaboration with the director, has penned a love story all right, but there's nothing happy or remotely satisfying about its outcome.
Joe Kavanagh (Peter Mullan) has been on the wagon for 10 months and is still feeling fragile when he befriends and then falls in love with Sarah Downey (Louise Goodall), a Scottish health care worker. While Sarah, a sensible, hard-working sort, realizes that the jobless Joe is far from a great catch, she responds to his humor, honesty and newfound lust for life.
Eager to make amends for his past mistakes, Joe coaches the local delinquents' soccer team and serves as the players' guidance counselor. He and Sarah share a reclamation project: a recovered drug addict, Liam (David McKay), his weak-willed girlfriend, Sabine, and their surprisingly well-adjusted toddler.
Liam is the most valuable and most vulnerable member of Joe's ill-equipped, inept team (not that this means anything. Since they're the worst in the league). And like his teammates, he is unemployed, uneducated and unlikely to escape the grim projects of the Glaswegian ghetto. When Liam discovers that his girlfriend (Anne-Marie Kennedy) owes the local drug kingpin 2,000 pounds, Joe intercedes on the boy's behalf. Joe realizes too late that he's still too fragile to cope with both a difficult love affair and his young friend's increasingly deadly and most certainly insoluble situation.
Mullan, who appeared in "Trainspotting" and "Braveheart," won the best-actor award at last year's Cannes Film Festival for his charming, realistically moving performance. Goodall lends solid support as Sarah, a woman still tormented by a mysterious something in her past. Alas, Sarah never reveals that something, which is central not only to her actions, but also to the movie's baffling conclusion. (Speaking of baffling: Accents are so thick that the film is in English, with English subtitles.)
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