The line between reality and fiction is skinny to vanishing on this Liverpool-set experimental docudrama, a examine of dependancy and the way it rumbles down by means of generations. It’s directed by visible artist Melanie Manchot and is being proven as a multiscreen set up in Cornwall in addition to screening in cinemas. Manchot labored with a Liverpool restoration group, hiring members, with lived expertise, as actors. At its worst the outcome has a little bit of a workshop really feel, stilted and a bit studied; there’s additionally expressionist dancing. However at its finest, it is a painful, uncooked examine of dependancy, with a strong, dedicated efficiency by Stephen Giddings.
Giddings performs himself (or a model of himself), a recovering alcoholic and aspiring actor up for the lead in a movie; the character is named Tom, a financial institution cashier who had issues prior to now with playing. Tom has made a contemporary begin with girlfriend Sarah, who’s pregnant, and collectively they’re shopping for a flat – however Tom has began betting once more, and alarmingly, he’s dipping into the financial institution funds at work.
We watch Stephen audition, rehearse, and share his life expertise. There are additionally scenes from the film-within-a-film. Among the many finest is a horribly tense backroom card sport wherein Tom loses huge time. (My solely gripe was an look by the ex EastEnders actor Michelle Collins as a tricky mortgage shark, giving a efficiency that feels extra calibrated to a Man Ritchie film.)
The questions the movie asks are vital: about dependancy and the way it impacts households. I wasn’t satisfied it absolutely comes collectively and maybe in the long run it really works finest in a gallery area. One other layer of reality and fiction is the point out right here and there of the real-life early Twentieth-century case of Thomas Goudie, jailed for embezzling nearly £170,000 from the financial institution he labored at as a clerk in Liverpool. His arrest grew to become the topic of the primary ever police reconstruction filmed in 1901 – which you’ll watch without cost on BFI Participant.
Stephen is in UK cinemas from 26 April; the set up is on the Alternate, Newlyn, Cornwall from 5 Could.
