Sweet Sixteen Cinema

• Cert:
• Running time: 106 minutes
• Year: 2002
• Released: 4th October, 2002
• Widescreen Ratio: 1.85:1
• Rating: 9/10

Director:

(My Name is Joe, Kes, Land and Freedom)

Cast:

Inevitability hangs in the air like a bad smell all through Sweet Sixteen.

That doesn’t mean it’s predictable though, just that for the characterspresented, there is no escaping their circumstances. Or their fates.

Fifteen year old Liam lives in the formerly thriving ship building town ofGreenock in the west of Scotland. His mother is in prison and hisstep-father is an abusive drug dealer whom he despises. Kicked out of thehouse for not passing drugs to his mother, Liam goes to live with hissister and her young son, wanting nothing more than to have his mother outso they can be a family.

His dream is to get enough money together to buy a caravan for them all tolive in and, to fund it, he turns to selling drugs that he stole from hisstep-father. This brings him to the attention of the local drug kingpin whorecognises that Liam is clever and resourceful and could make him money.Liam is soon drawn farther into the criminal activities that he initiallyseemed smart enough to be able to escape. Loyalties will be tested andrelationships will be strained to snapping point before events take theirfateful course.

Sweet Sixteen is a breathtaking, heartbreaking vision of deprivation anddesperation. The film has caused something of a stir in the Greenock areawith politicians complaining that it shows the town in a bad light, asthough the film makers were implying that crime and drugs were endemic toGreenock. This is a story that could have been told in just about any townin Britain, or indeed the world. It’s very much to the credit of everyoneinvolved that we are one hundred percent on Liam’s side throughout, andthat we never perceive him as simply a drug dealing criminal. Most of thepraise has to go to newcomer Martin Compston, who gives an astonishingperformance, as good as anything seen on any cinema screen in the last twoyears. He brings everything it is possible to bring to the role: insolence,rage, humour, anguish, longing, fear, bitterness, tenderness, love, hate.

Praise too, to writer Laverty and director Ken Loach for filling such a brutalworld with so much compassion. I’ve always preferred the naturalism ofLoach to the contrived and over written style of Mike Leigh, and thisapproach reaps great rewards here with both the performances and writingflowing effortlessly until we might not be watching actors at all. Thismeans that the dialogue is necessarily harsh and unforgiving, and noconcessions are made to tailor it for a mass audience.

I understand subtitles will be provided outwith Scotland – this is probably a good ideaas some of the dialogue would likely prove impenetrable to non-Scots. Iwork in the town where Sweet Sixteen was filmed and set, and there wereoccasions when I had to concentrate one hundred percent on what was beingsaid in order to pick it up. This is no reason whatsoever to miss SweetSixteen though. It is, by some distance, the best film I’ve seen this year.