Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Wwith love and passion from the heart, and an abundance of good performances from young actors shot in close-up for a long time, Clio Barnard he has created an interesting and inspiring picture of society. It’s a film whose mixture of sadness, cynicism and tainted joy stayed with me hours after it finished.
It’s about five young people from Birmingham who grew up together, until their late 20s, see the looming crisis and near disaster growing mysteriously from within their ever-increasing inner circle. Adapted by screenwriter Enda Walsh from Kieran Goddard’s book of the same name, Goddard’s famous five-person pentaptych is transformed into a house drama reminiscent of Fellini’s I Vitelloni.
We are introduced to our five fans at a weed and coke birthday party where good times are had and there is no doubt that the party is over. The first of the parallels is Rian, played by Joe Cole, who has created something. Using an inheritance from his dead father, Rian hits the jackpot in online property sales and while his friends live modestly or carelessly, he now buys a cold and soulless apartment in London where he meets a beautiful girl whom his friends call “Kate Middleton”. He is not exactly happy and is happy to be back on the home court.
Rian’s success has created a sense of unease and self-examination through everyone else. Conor (Daryl McCormack) is the son of an architect who took pride in his work, and was inspired by Rian’s success to set up a house building company that forced Rian to become a commercial executive; he is a hard working man and expectant father but is clearly taken care of and responsible. Shiv (Lola Petticrew) is a smart and loving mother of two little girls, very happy to be at home and married to Patrick (Anthony Boyle), who is very worried about being a delivery bike driver in his late 20s. But easily the most lost – obviously – among them is Oli (Jay Lycurgo), a goofy, smiley slacker who does heroin but is apparently inspired to change his ways by adopting a stray dog. in the street; Conor hires Oli as a site worker.
Patrick talks about the time he was away from everyone at uni, something that makes his lowly job as Deliveroo all the more worrying, and he is angry at the way capitalism and the affluent classes are exploiting working people like him. As it turns out, however, Patrick isn’t the only one with an education. Conor has named his new construction company “Dedalus” after the Greek mythological architect; this is a tribute to his father, although Barnard would like the audience to remember that Dedalus’ son was Icarus, who flew very close to the sun. This scene is interspersed with a long shot of the safety of Dedalus’ house rising from the wreckage.
The film shows that each house is the story of their five lives. It is also the center of a renewed debate: is home ownership a human right or a strict economy and credit protection for the wealthy? The demolition of the brutal blocks of Birmingham as a child was fascinating, inspiring. Oli in a dream says that Satan’s face was visible in a big cloud of dust; it was terrifying, exciting, unsettling. Was it a new beginning? For Rian and Conor, the answer would seem to be yes, but Patrick is furious that their shiny, sustainable construction project is just another way to make money for the newly rich. But what does Rian drive? Does Shiv know anything about Rosebud’s unhappy secret? What would happen if Rian didn’t gain weight? If he hadn’t, Conor wouldn’t have been able to start his construction business, and Rian wouldn’t have unknowingly encouraged him to believe that it was as easily profitable as an online casino business.
The split between Rian and Patrick and Patrick and Shiv may not have unfolded the way they did, but Oli’s life hasn’t changed either. This is a sad, sweet film, full of restraint and hope.
