I want my hair cut

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Movies of 2020...

#18 : Lynn+Lucy

Slice of intense British social realism, with Roxanne Scrimshaw and Nichola Burley as childhood friends whose relationship with each other means more than their marriages and children

"Intense British social realism".  Hmmm.  I have to admit "means more than their marriages" got me a bit intrigued, but I totally wasn't convinced I was going to enjoy this...

And having watched it, I'm not sure how much I can really describe what went on.  Partly because it would give the plot away, but partly because a lot of the time you really don't know what's going on.  But a lot of that is because the characters don't know what's going on - I guess that's social realism for you.  But then it becomes clear and you're like "ah - I was so much happier when I didn't know".  Believe me, no-one is going to be watching this film for a laugh.

The acting is generally fine, with Roxanne Scrimshaw and Nichola Burley carrying the film as the title characters - I wasn't always convinced by the relationship between them, but I think it was written that way with the general idea being that Roxanne/Lynn was constantly questioning whether what she believes they have/had is/was really the case (but I might be being overly generous here).  It's worth giving Roxanne an extra shout out here because this is her first (and currently only) film - it's a very impressive performance given those circumstances.  However, I didn't really feel any of the characters were particularly well fleshed out and you'd have to say the men in the film come off particularly badly as cartoonishly useless.  Also, the whole film felt a bit strange because it was filmed in 4:3 which gave it a really dated feel - I assume that was a stylistic decision, but I'm not entirely sure why.

All in all, I'd have to say I'm not overly impressed with this - it's an interesting concept about the breakdown of a friendship but the subject matter is just so unremittingly grim that I struggle to understand why anyone would want to subject themselves to this.  Yes, there's obviously the argument that bad things happen to good people and we shouldn't be afraid to recognise that but there just doesn't seem to be any particular point to it here and I'm afraid I just don't agree with the critics that it's done well.  I'd also argue that The Guardian's description of the film is extremely misleading - apart from the "intense" bit anyway.

I was interested to see what Rotten Tomatoes had to say about the film and wasn't in the slightest bit surprised to see that the critics rating was at 93% whereas the audience rating is zero because no-one has bothered to write anything on it.  IMDB also tells me that the global takings for the film are $2.5k - yes, it was obviously unlucky to be released during the pandemic but I struggle to imagine it would have found a much wider audience in happier times.

At time of writing, the film is available to rent in all the usual places - but I think we can safely say I'm not recommending it.

#19 - A film covering a long period of time
#17 - An interesting woman