DIRECTOR Ken Loach has a deserved reputation for put ting out well-made but gloomy movies about working-class life – gritty social realism interspersed with Marxist lectures – that do well only in France. Which makes his new film, ‘My Name Is Joe,” even more of a pleasant surprise – there’s no overtly political content, and much of it is taken up by a delightful, heartwarming, grown-up love story.
To be sure,’My Name is Joe” is not for the filmgoer who wants a few lighthearted laughs on a Saturday night. But it’s a moving, powerful film that – thanks to the winning combination of some first-rate direction, terrific performances and an intelligent script laced with understated humor – is completely involving. Its characters stay with you long after the credits have come rolled.
The film is set in Glasgow, a once-prosperous Scottish city now notorious for its heroin addicts, its brutal gangs and its total economic dependence on the state. Joe (Peter Mullan) is a 37-year-old unemployed former alcoholic who coaches a soccer team for delinquents. He’s worried about one of the players, Liam (David McKay), a former addict who is trying to pull his own life together for the sake of his little son and his slatternly junkie wife. Because of his wife, Liam owes the local gangsters money he cannot pay back.
Picking up Liam for a soccer game, Joe meets nurse Sarah (Louise Goodall), a social worker. Although – or perhaps because – they come from different worlds (she’s lower-middle as opposed to working class) there’s an immediate attraction that gradually blossoms into romance. Not only has Joe turned his life around; his whole world is expanding. But then Liam’s worsening predicament forces Joe to go back into the criminal underworld and risk everything he has achieved.
The relationship between Joe and Sarah is wonderfully real. And as a result of this and the fine performances by Mullan and Goodall, the love scenes between these two middle-aged people have an erotic charge that’s all too rare in Hollywood productions. (Mullan won a deserved best actor award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival for this role.)
Unfortunately, the creaky crime plot elements of the movie tend to slow it down. Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty employ a traditional movie cliche: the hero who is on the straight and narrow but must, for the best of reasons, commit one last crime. But the way they resolve the situation, and the movie, is disappointing and half-hearted.
Still, ‘My Name is Joe” is a heartwarming film. Its intended message is: look at the terrible situations people are forced into by unemployment. But this portrait of slums where everyone lives off the state – except for the hookers and drug dealers – says more about the psychological devastation wrought by the welfare culture than about poverty. In a mindset strange to most American sensibilities, the notion of moving to where the jobs are rather than complacently settling down to a life on the dole simply never occurs to these characters.
(MD+BO)MY NAME IS JOE(MD-BO)
Directed by Ken Loach. Screenplay by Paul Laverty. Starring Peter Mullan, Louise Goodall and David McKay. Running time: 105 minutes. Rating: R. At Lincoln Plaza and BAM Rose (Brooklyn).
