Young Adam Movie Review:


Synopsis:

Joe works on a barge in Glasgow, the dull routine of his days broken only by an ill-advised affair with his captain’s wife. But when a young woman’s body is found floating in the Clyde, his cosy world begins to crumble...

Young Adam stars Ewan McGregor as Joe, a young man working on a barge on the Union Canal during the 1950’s in Scotland.

The movie opens with one of the most beautiful, sad, melancholic and disturbing openings of a movie I have seen in a long time. Starting with a woman’s body floating in the Canal, we are drawn immediately into a dark tale of passion, sex, loss, loneliness and anger.

McGregor and Peter Mulan's characters pull the partially clothed body out of the water, and McGregor denys any knowledge of knowing the person, and during the movie we are shown that is not to be the case.

This is surely Ewan McGregor’s most subtle work to date. Instead of his usual maniacal laugh and wide eyed grin, a subtle performance of much nuance and depth is instead drawn out of him. We are never sure what his character is thinking or truly feeling, except when this is required, no Star Wars overacting here. He chooses to restrain his expressions and mannerisms where the lightest of touches is what truly affects as this movie surely does.

The scene at the end of the movie is surely one of the best he has ever done, truly amazing. He portrays the character as extremely lonely with his liasons being attempts at breaking down that loneliness but due to the distance he embues the character the liasons have no sensuality whatsoever.

It could be said that Mulan’s role is underwritten, but this is irrelevant as the movie is driven by McGregor and his relationship’s with women.

Tilda Swilton and Emily Mortimer are the two main characters that McGregor has liasons with, and both of them handle their performances beautifully showing their longing, distance and humanity throughout.

Young Adam is filled with sexual contact, but instead of being gratuitous like so many other movies, the sex is used as a way to show what makes the characters tick. The movie does feature a lot of sex and is definitely for an adult audience. By that I mean an audience who are prepared to accept the sex as something more than just gratuitous entertainment. The sex is used to show us elements of what makes the character tick. For instance Joe has a torrid affair with Tilda Swilton, Mulan’s wife and does he really care for her? Or is it to cover up something else?

One sex scene is truly shocking, and is used powerfully to break up a relationship. I can assure you, you will never look at custard in the same light again. The scene is very reminiscent of The Postman Always Rings Twice, but in an angry hating manner, which could easily be construed as rape, and is a tough scene to watch.

Can it be said that there are too many sex scenes in this movie? Probably. Does McGregor get his knob out again? Yes, is this anything other than a running joke now? To be fair this is only a slight criticism of the movie, and does not affect it’s quality one iota. The sex scenes are used to show the emotional involvement and lack thereof and do very much drive the movie on.

The score for Young Adam is by David Byrne and is perfect at setting the tone for the movie, being melancholic, dark and subtle, never overpowering what we are watching, instead helping to draw us in to the world the director has created.

Young Adam is beautifully shot being all dark blues and black with light used to illuminate the scene, again drawing us into the 1950’s setting on the Union canal. The movie is full of subtle moving moments such as when McGregor’s character brushes his leg against Tilda Swilton’s leg it truly has you enraptured.

The pace of the movie is funereal, and many people may find the subtle, monotonous material hard to appreciate, due to it's dark resigned tone.

Heartbreaking, filled with sadness, and loss.

Gary Gray

“Young Adam,” the new film from David Mackenzie, begins with an image
that it is worth remembering throughout the film, and that a lot of people will overlook. We are shown a swan swimming along a canal from above, looking, as swans do, elegant and calm, and then we see the swan from under
the water, its feet flapping furiously. I was reminded of an early shot in “Blue Velvet” where the camera moves through the grass to the bugs and insects underneath – suggesting things are uglier than they appear - and one at the start of “Lantana,” which moved through a plant that turns out to be more complicated than it seemed.

In “Young Adam,” the image was similar:
the contrast between above and below the surface. The image did not suggest that one was more ugly than the other, or that one was more complicated; just that they are different.
This brief but significant image is followed by one of a dead body floating in the canal, which is fished out by Joe, a young worker on a barge
in Glasgow, and Les, his employer. Les has a family consisting of a wife, Ella, and their son, Jim. Simple enough. On the surface.

We learn quickly that, right under Les’s nose, Joe and Ella are having an affair. The early sex scenes in the film – there are many – follow a
pattern; Joe approaches Ella, she says something suggesting she is not
interested, but her body itself offers no resistance. She is bored with Les, and gives in too easily to Joe (the concept of giving in to temptation is perhaps the key to the film’s name). The film unfolds slowly, patiently, and in unexpected ways. The body at the start turns out to be of greater significance than we may have
suspected. Joe does not restrict himself, sexually, to Ella.

He uses sex as a way to add some colour to his otherwise pretty sad life, although he
does not seem to get any great deal of pleasure from it. In flashback, we learn of Joe’s old girlfriend, Cathie, who did, it would seem, love him on a more than physical level (we are not sure if he feels the same way about
her, and he probably isn’t either). They share scenes of affection and scenes of bitterness, including one that I will only describe as almost
ridiculously kinky. That’s one of those scenes where I was left unsure how I was supposed to feel; unsure whether the characters were enjoying
themselves or whether they were finding a way to express their rage.

In a film where the plot moves slowly and rarely hits anything big, the attention and care of the audience depends on the script and the actors.
The script is curious; the film’s dialogue is often so dull that I could only think that this is the way people talk in real life, not in the movies.

That, though, is not a criticism, especially when you consider the performances. Joe is played by Ewan McGregor, and this may be his best
performance yet. It’s certainly his most subtle, so much so that some audience members may be unimpressed by it, forgetting that it’s sometimes
most difficult for an actor to reserve emotions and still be a three dimensional character. He certainly is an interesting character, who
surprised me constantly. We learn that he reads a lot, he once tried writing – and failed, using his writing time to make custard, leading to the
afore-mentioned kinky scene… but I’ll let you discover that for yourself – and that he wants (or wanted) to go to China.

Tilda Swinton plays Ella as a typical wife of the time – the film is set in the ’50s – doing things that are perhaps not so typical, i.e. the
relationship with Joe. Her habit of asking Joe if he wants some tea at awkward times gives the film a very slight edge of humour. Her husband,
Les, is played by Peter Mullan. When he finds out about the affair, his character acts true to himself, rather than to the conventions of scenes
about husbands finding out about their wives’ affairs.

These characters do not express a great deal of emotion, and when they do, it is unexpected, and makes us reconsider the characters once more (such as a scene where Ella and Joe, rather cruelly, laugh together at the misfortune of Les). The film is also shot with patience and care, with a lot of scenes in the dark, and a lot of shots using a haunting symmetry, as when the barge is slowly consumed by a dark tunnel. It is not ugly, nor flashy, but right for the material.

“Young Adam” is a patient, thoughtful
film, for patient, thoughtful viewers. Shots sometimes linger on characters for a while, and some people may find themselves fidgeting, others trying to work out what is going on in the characters’ heads, below the surface.

The film ends somewhat abruptly, but it is perhaps the best climax the
film could have. Alternatives would have Joe do a far, far better thing than he has ever done, which would be unlikely and unrealistic; or a more
neat, happier ending. I prefer this ending’s ambiguity. The whole film is ambiguous, and so are the characters. They are stuck in dull lives, not heading anywhere, not moving.

And that is where we leave them.

****1/2 (out of 5)

Adam Whyte

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