Recovered Classic: Riff-Raff


On the face of it, highly respected director Ken Loach’s Riff-Raff—an achingly accurate and uncompromising look at the desperate lot of the English working class in the early 1990s—doesn’t exactly sound like a barrel of laughs.

Set mainly on a London building site, the earthy script centres on a disparate band of nomadic construction workers who exists from week to week, living in squats and putting up with aggressive bosses (and dodgy safety standards) as long as there’s a wage packet at the end of it.

Yet despite the grim-sounding subject matter, Loach’s daringly frank film is bitingly funny, thanks largely to some splendid verbal sparring and one particularly inspired scene featuring the marvellous Ricky Tomlinson.

The main character, however, is Robert Carlyle’s Stevie, a Scot who travels south looking to make a fresh start. He actually thinks his fortune lies in boxer shorts, but after finding employment as a labourer and being set up in a squat by his new workmates, he soon hooks up with aspiring singer Susan (Emer McCourt) a relationship which proves highly volatile as well as being fleetingly touching.

Flitting around between the day-to-day goings-on at the construction site and Carlyle’s mundane routine, what lifts Loach’s surprisingly entertaining movie is that although there’s a clear social message behind Bill Jesse’s script (himself a building worker who tragically died as the film was being completed) Riff-Raff hits a nerve thanks to the rough camaraderie which is brought to life by the largely unknown cast and the marvellously irreverent dialogue, much of which was improvised.

In fact, regional accents abound and although the film is in English, Fine Line Features saw fit to add subtitles when it was released in the USA for fear that American audiences wouldn’t be able to understand a word. Another interesting snippet, and one which partly explains the deft interplay between the main characters, is that Loach insisted on casting only actors who actually had experience of working in construction. A decision which clearly pays off.

Inevitably there’s plenty of scope for Loach to engage his actors in a succession of arguments and confrontations, with most of the opportunities to rant and rave falling to Tomlinson, who plays a campaigning but lovable Scouser with an uncanny ability to put a socio-political slant on anything.

What Loach doesn’t do, however, is pitch his gritty film as a hard luck story. There are no stark comparisons between the haves and have-nots. So the director doesn’t waste time contrasting the lives of the site workers with those of the filthy rich. Instead, he portrays these working class grafters as realists, people who simply get on with it and take what life throws at them on the chin.

Death, drugs, love, laughter, it’s all in there, and even though the final scene has devastating consequences for all concerned, it somehow brings a smile to your face, knowing that for once, the downtrodden have managed to strike a blow for the working man.

David Lichtneker

Site Contents Copyright© The Z Review, unless used with permission.This site has no intention to infringe on the rights of the film owners of Riff-Raff and intellectual copyright holders of the movies mentioned herein & hold copyright over the movie, characters, merchandise & storyline.