CINEMA: Somers Town

Made with money from Eurostar, director Shane Meadows’ latest piece of whimsy isn’t really a whole film at all; it’s a bit like a Milky Way – fills a gap between movies without spoiling your appetite for the main course.

Set in and around the Somers Town area of London, it’s a tale of friendship found within loneliness, of growing up and growing wise, and of finding hope in the bleakest of circumstances. The excellent Thomas Turgoose of This Is England fame plays Tomo, a northern teenager who escapes his broken home life by jumping on a train to London. Here he gets roughed up and robbed but encounters the equally lonely Marek (Piotr Jagiello), the son of a Polish construction worker who is left to amuse himself while his dad is at work.  Marek spends most of his days taking photos and mooning over a French waitress and soon Tomo is equally smitten. So, for 71 minutes, this small-scale, black and white picture follows this unlikely pair as they mooch about their area, dreaming up moneymaking schemes, and basically whiling their days away. However, they do so in such an entertaining manner the running time simply flies by with lots of laugh out loud moments and genuinely amusing gems.

Although this is not as powerful as This Is England, Somers Town has a gentle charm about it – if only Meadows had been able to expand the storyline, adding depth and detail, then this would have been a proper feature rather than simply a taster.       Dee Pilgrim