4.0 out of 5 stars
Solid, disturbing, mostly well acted and well shot portrait of poverty and despair in Wales., May 10, 2011
This review is from: A Way of Life (DVD)
Makes some trenchant and powerful points about racism, and the way the poor are often
turned against each other.
That said, it's become a fairly familiar story, and this reminded me of a lot of other films.
Also, as good as the performances often were, I kept being naggingly aware I was watching
actors doing a very good job 'acting like' poor, uneducated people. Especially with the young lead,
-- I felt just the slightest hint she was playing `down' to her character.
I did appreciate the lack of softening the edges of these characters to make them `likable'.
I'll still take this kind of socially aware, intense film over 99% of what's out there, even with any
flaws.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Revenge and racism are not a good mix..., December 7, 2008
This review is from: A Way of Life (DVD)
The beginning of the movie starts with the climax. You see teenagers wearing hoodies kicking someone on the ground, a girl screaming nearby, and a baby left on the side of the road, steps away from the action.
You are then brought back to an earlier time where you are introduced to Leigh-Anne, who is a single (teenaged) mother of a beautiful baby girl (Rebecca) who does anything she can to get by. She lies, cheats, pimps out friends to older men, anything to make a dollar. The mold on the ceiling is causing her baby to develop respitory problems and her electricity is constantly out, so she leaves Rebecca's milk out on the windowsill to keep it cold. Her social worker constantly stops by to make sure she is raising the baby right, and the father has taken off. Could it get any worse?
Actually, it can. Her brother Gavin, and his friends Robbie and Stephen come by a lot, smoking pot and cigarettes, stealing from neighbors, and beating up anyone they don't like. To top it off, they are racist, yelling "Paki" and "black" to anyone with a different last name or someone with darker skin. Leigh-Anne seems to have a history of sleeping with both of her brother's friends. Sometimes, the story is a little muddled, and not everything is explained, I wasn't even aware that Gavin was Leigh-Anne's brother at first, I thought it he was the baby's dad. Gavin likes Julie, the girl across the street, who's dad is Turkish, but she isn't aware Gavin's racist comments. When a misunderstanding happens between Leigh-Anne and what she sees between Julie's dad and the social worker, it explodes into a scary climax of a girl who will do anything to keep her baby.
The movie is very fast paced and you find out from the history of the teenagers that the parents are either dead, or just out of their lives. Brenda Blethyn plays Annette, who is Leigh-Anne's stepmother/aunt who wants to take Rebecca off of her hands, but Leigh-Anne just wants Annette out of her life. No characters are living their lives, they are just trying to survive. It's extremely depressing and you go back and forth between feeling sorry for the kids and wanting to shake them. I was reminded of the kids in
Bully because these guys did not do a great job to cover up their crimes and I thought that was slightly unrealistic. It amazes me that no one thought of consequences and at the end Leigh-Anne seems shocked about what happens to her.
I scored the movie a little lower because the DVD had NO subtitles. With strong Welsh accents, I couldn't understand half of the movie and I was constantly going back and trying to read their lips. If you are in the mood to see dismal, gloomy, yet well made film, this is the one for you.
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