Mubi Monday: Gregory's Girl (1980)

There are some films that you immediately love, some films you grow to love, and some films that you not only grow to love, but also grow to appreciate rewatching, because of everything it delivers throughout multiple viewings. Gregory’s Girl isn’t a film I immediately warmed to, mainly because I saw it before I had gone through a number of moments that would make it more relatable. I grew to love it though, and every subsequent viewing has made me love it a little bit more.

It focuses on Gregory (John Gordon Sinclair), a Scottish teenager going through the usual trials and tribulations of any schoolboy in the 1980s. His main interests seem to be football and girls, which leads to him feeling very conflicted when it looks as if he might lose his place on the school football team to Dorothy (Dee Hepburn). Dorothy is both attractive and very good at football, but will she take a liking to Gregory? Will Gregory, meanwhile, notice that Susan (Clare Grogan) has taken a liking to him?

Feeling both wonderfully surreal and yet beautifully observed and authentic, Gregory’s Girl is one of many brilliant works from writer-director Bill Forsyth that uses specific characters and locations to tell a story that appeals to a high percentage of viewers. We may not have all grown up as a teenager in Scotland (okay, I did, but I appreciate that many others didn’t), but we’ve all navigated those tricky years of trying to engage with members of the opposite sex while also being absolutely terrified of them. Some manage it better than others, but it’s a scary time.

While Sinclair, Hepburn, and Grogan all do well in their roles, and are supported in scenes by equally  wonderful turns from Robert Buchanan, Caroline Guthrie, and Allison Forster, Forsyth allows time for some of the older cast members - Jake D’Arcy, Chic Murray, Dave Anderson, and Maeve Watt - to get involved with some of the highlights of the film. If I start making scenes then I won’t stop, but one early treat is the conversation that Gregory has with his dry-witted father during a driving lesson (Gregory is outside the car, having caused the young man that his father is teaching to have to conduct an unplanned emergency stop).

Whether you’re watching a young boy waddle around the school dressed as a penguin, learning about the amount of cornflakes that are driven daily along the busiest road shown in the film, or just watching a young man put his school shirt back on before applying deodorant to the material beneath his armpits, Gregory’s Girl is full of treats from start to finish. Local Hero may be the film that many view as Forsyth’s best work (helped by the gorgeous location and that beautiful score), but it’s Gregory’s Girl that does the better job of mixing film moments with plenty of details that resonate with authenticity. The only reason I don’t rate it as a perfect film is because I eagerly await what extra details I will notice during my next viewing.

Great performances all round, a script that may well be perfect, and unfussy direction from Forsyth. It may seem very dated now, in some ways, but Gregory’s Girl has themes at the heart of it that are, for better or for worse, quite timeless. And it makes me SO glad that I never have to be a teenager again.

9/10

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Lost At Christmas (2020)

It's Fort William. It's almost Christmas. Rob (Kenny Boyle) decides to get down on one knee and propose to the woman he has been in a relationship with since high school. She turns him down. Jen (Natalie Clark) decides to surprise a man she is in love with, taking a bag of gifts with her. She's upset to learn that he is happily settled in for the season with his wife. And so begins a typical tale of two mismatched strangers who head on a road trip, attempting to get home in time for Christmas. They can reach the village of Glencoe, and an inn populated by people who seem to be avoiding the usual Christmas festivities, but can they get any further?

Expanded from the 2015 short, Perfect Strangers, Lost At Christmas is a film that would be easier to dismiss if it wasn't working within the parameters of a standard Christmas movie. The character development is, well, it's thin on the ground, and everything that happens is done in a decidedly unrealistic, tick-the-tropes-checklist, way. But it's a Christmas movie, and everyone knows how I judge these movies differently from other types of movies.

Director Ryan Hendrick, who co-wrote the film with Clare Sheppard (both having worked together on the original short), wants to make something that adheres to the rules of this kind of thing, but only until he wants to commit a u-turn on things and show that the rules are there to be broken. Except . . . well, we very rarely watch Christmas movies to see the rules being broken. We watch them to know what we're getting. It's a testament to the quality of the film if it can impress and amuse viewers while working within the limitations of "the genre". Sticking to the rules until you don't want to just somehow feels like a cheat.

The leads do well in their roles, but Clark is the better of the two. She has the energy and enthusiasm, while trying to cover up her own pain for a lot of the runtime. Boyle is fine, but spends a lot of the film looking a bit too much like a cold Rick Astley to be completely likeable. The supporting cast is made up of a number of familiar Scottish faces, or faces familiar to Scottish viewers, including Sylvester McCoy, Sanjeev Kohli, and Clare Grogan. Frazer Hines also has fun in his role, the buddy of McCoy's character, both old men dispensing wisdom and wry asides whenever they're onscreen.

There are some laughs here and there, and the obligatory third act turnaround for people who have been resistant to the charms of Christmas, but the rest of the movie fails to follow on from a solid opening sequence. There isn't any major last-minute revelations, no tension is created (even though tension created in these movies is fleeting, as we know what needs to happen), and the very last scene . . . well, the less said about that the better. 

I still enjoyed this enough. I'll just never want to revisit it, and can't highly recommend it to others.

5/10

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Comfort And Joy (1984)

Bill Paterson stars as a radio host, Alan "Dickie" Bird, who isn't having a very good Christmas in this gentle comedy from writer-director Bill Forsyth. Alan has just been ditched by his girlfriend (Eleanor David), he's feeling pretty low, and then he gets caught up in the middle of a strange attack on an ice cream van while simply buying a cone for himself. This incident leads to him becoming involved in the middle of an "ice cream war" between Trevor (Alex Norton) and Mr. McCool (Roberto Bernardi), relaying coded messages through his radio show that makes his employer (Rikki Fulton) start to worry about his sanity.

If you've seen both Gregory's Girl and Local Hero then you'll be familiar with the way Forsyth likes to approach his material. Unfirtunately, this film isn't as good as either of those movies, but it's still enjoyable enough. It just runs the risk of being so low-key and light that it could blow away, like a dandelion in a strong breeze. Most of the humour is derived from the fact that the people involved in this "war" take it so seriously, despite the fact that it's just about ice cream, and Paterson is the outsider looking in on the whole thing. It's also worth noting, for anyone who doesn't know, that the movie is loosely based on some running turf wars in Glasgow that WERE dubbed "The Glasgow Ice Cream Wars". That situaton wasn't as pleasant, but Forsyth does well in transforming it and making everything more palatable while still being able to point at the underlying ridiculousness of any business competition that escalates to such extremes.

Paterson is very good in the lead role, initially watching events unfold with sheer bemusement before deciding to take a more pro-active stance. He also has a great voice for radio, making him all the more believable in the role. Norton and Bernardi are both fine as the warring rivals, Fulton is as wryly amusing as usual, and Clare Grogan has a small role, catching Paterson's eye and inevitably dragging him into the whole mess. David is also very good, albeit not in the film for that long, and Patrick Malahide does well as Colin, a friend who just wants Alan to move on with his life after a break-up that he assumes must feel pretty sore.

There's another great soundtrack supplied by Mark Knopfler, a great running gag about a car constantly being damaged, and a final act that feels as logical as it is amusing. There are also a few unnecessary dream sequences, one bizarrely awkward conversation between Alan and Colin about Colin's young daughter, and the feeling that every scene has space for some more humour to be added. I'm not JUST creating a clumsy analogy by saying that it's almost like receiving an ice cream cone with only half a scoop sitting on the top. Well, okay, maybe I am.

6/10

Keep hunting for a cheaper disc than this R2 release - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Comfort-Joy-DVD-Bill-Paterson/dp/B0002W19VA/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1417913464&sr=1-1&keywords=comfort+and+joy

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The UK version can be bought here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395945647&sr=1-3&keywords=movie+guide

And American folks can buy it here - http://www.amazon.com/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395945752&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=TJs+ramshackle+mov

As much as I love the rest of the world, I can't keep up with all of the different links in different territories, but trust me when I say that it should be there on your local Amazon.