Looking for Eric
Director: Ken Loach
Fireflies in the Garden
Director: Dennis Lee
Delta
Director: Kornél Mundruczó
In the past, director Ken Loach has used a football metaphor to describe his films, dividing them into home fixtures (My Name is Joe, Sweet Sixteen) or away games (Bread and Roses, Land and Freedom). His latest, Looking for Eric, is what I would call a friendly.
In it, a wiry, put-upon, past-his-prime postman, Eric Bishop (Steve Evets) approaches cracking point and begins having conversations with an imaginary Eric Cantona (with the footballing legend playing himself). They share wine, talk football and even train together, as Eric struggles to get his life back on track, specifically dealing with the reappearance of his first wife, Lily (Stephanie Bishop), whom he abandoned soon after the birth of their daughter, Sam, in the 1980s.
The idea, which owes much to Woody Allen’s Play it Again, Sam, in which a film critic has conversations with an imaginary Humphrey Bogart, is writer Paul Laverty’s response to an approach from Cantona to make a movie about the footballer’s relationship with his fans. This being a Ken Loach film, there are elements of social commentary – in particular, the part that dysfunctional families play in the growth of gun crime. One of Eric’s stepsons (Gerard Kearns) hides a gun for a local Mr Big. When Eric discovers it, he finds that he cannot take action alone. There is also a tribute to the power of solidarity; the last reel has an element of wish fulfilment not seen in much of Loach’s previous work.
Laverty writes some scenes where you can predict the punchline. Cantona’s dialogue is muffled by his accent. Nevertheless, the film grows in comic and dramatic impact. Evets gives an extremely naturalistic, modest performance, with some fresh responses to Cantona’s pontificating. For his part, the former Manchester United star repeats his inscrutable performance from the recent French Film, although there is a good joke describing how he spent his nine-month ban after karate-kicking a supporter. Meanwhile, John Henshaw, as Eric’s best pal, Meatballs, a deus ex machina in a donkey jacket, effortlessly steals the film with his endless stream of self-help-inspired advice.
The film is not only about friendship, but is also a romance – one in which the two lovers never kiss (and I’m not referring to Bishop and Cantona). One heavy-handed moment aside, in which characters are barked at by voices-off, Looking for Eric emerges as a feel-good audience-rouser, which leaves viewers on a high. Loach understands that comedy rather than rigorous social critique is the best response to the current political crisis – and this time he has hit the zeitgeist.
Julia Roberts’ regular pay-cheque could probably fund at least two independent movies, such as Fireflies in the Garden, in which she stars as Lisa, a put-upon mother who dies within the first ten minutes of the movie. Naturally, there are flashbacks, as her writer son Michael (Ryan Reynolds) returns for the funeral and tries to avoid his taciturn old man (Willem Dafoe), a failed writer himself.
“If you cannot look after something, you don’t deserve to keep it”, is the latter’s mantra as he berates his son for neglecting his bicycle or mislaying his glasses. For his part, the young Michael tries to pass off a Robert Frost poem as his own in front of his father’s academic friends. He also befriends his mother’s younger sister, Jane (Hayden Panettiere), a surly teen with an unusual way of fishing.
Crises and traumas are stacked up like pancakes as Michael’s nephew (Chase Ellison) causes the accident that results in Lisa’s death. Michael teaches the boy not to feel so guilty and fish like his mum. He also gets back together with his alcoholic estranged wife (Carrie-Anne Moss) who, in the only intentionally humorous scene – and it is in poor taste – makes love to Michael loudly during father’s tribute to Lisa.
So much of the film is the stuff of soap opera that you wait for a scene with the veneer of truth. Patience is not rewarded. First-time writer-director Dennis Lee clearly wanted to make a film about grief, but all he does is make us feel sorry for watching it. You cannot fault the performances, which are equal to but do not transcend the material. Dafoe has a thankless role that plays on his villainous persona rather than paying tribute to his performance as TS Eliot in the film Tom and Viv. It is no surprise when we discover that Lisa was having an affair with an academic (Ioan Gruffudd).
Reynolds proves himself to be an amiable leading man, while Emily Watson puts on a credible American accident as the slightly dotty Aunt Jane. The cinematographer, Danny Moder, is married to Julia Roberts and proves an unlikely magnet for the semi-starry cast. The title does not mean anything, although it does give Moder something interesting to light.
Film at its most elemental is about watching bodies coming together. As spectators we want consummation, the kiss that is shorthand for all the possibilities of human happiness. When the bodies are those of a brother and sister, our rational minds determine that incest is wrong, yet we may still desire the moment of consummation. When the bodies are punished for this moment, we are appalled. We question what it is to be human.
This is the subject of Delta, a film that does what cinema does best – exploring our desires by engaging directly with them. Delta is far more affecting than similar films on the subject, such as Stephen Poliakoff’s Close My Eyes and Andrew Birkin’s adaptation of Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden.
Written by Yvette Biró and director Kornél Mundruczó, Delta begins with a homecoming. A young man (Félix Lajkó) makes the long journey inland and greets his mother. He is told he cannot stay. He does not want to. He needs wood to build a new home on a pier off the bank of the river. His biological sister (Orsi Tóth), whom it is inferred he has never met, wishes to join him. This is frowned upon immediately. His stepfather is reluctant to sell him wood. Resentful, he rapes the young man’s sister. The young man remains steady in his purpose and helps the girl overcome her trauma. He is almost a Christ-like figure.
The focus is also on returning migrants: those who bring wealth and make those who eke their lives without ambition consumed by violent jealousy. The film is about the potential of youth to remake society with a competence and confidence that is frightening to the preceding generation. It raises questions about whether a society can truly tolerate change when it is reliant on fragile values.
The young man’s house can be seen as a metaphor for the film itself: a no-frills functional structure constructed with a sure-minded sense of purpose. It helps that the viewer has little knowledge of Hungarian rural society, a world apparently without newspapers or television. Watching Delta, you go through the brief experience of imagining you are not the product of your environment. This is cinema as purgation and re-birth. In these financially and politically troubled times, it is exactly what we need.
Patrick Mulcahy
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