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The Low Down begins with a group of twenty-somethings slouched round a London
flat, shooting the breeze and sharing a hangover. Heads are held, conversation
stutters and soon mild hysteria sets in. This scene effectively sets the tone
for a film which has the lazy, disconnected charm of a lost Sunday morning.
Jamie Thraves' debut feature is a slacker romance set in Hackney that revels
in the mundane detail of its unglamorous locations: kerbside rubbish bags,
illuminated Halal Meat signs and scaffolding. Its grungy milieu invites
comparison with similarly downbeat visions of the capital found in Michael
Winterbottom's Wonderland (1998) and Simon Cellan Jones' Some Voices (1999).
This is a film low on conventional dramatic tension but high on atmosphere
and character. Its narrative structure is loose and open-ended, the story
meanders towards an equivocal ending which leaves the fate of the central love
story unresolved. Such characteristics are famillar markers of European art
cinema, and Thraves' influences are clearly signposted. Bedroom sequences echo
Jean-Luc Godard's A Bout de souffle (1960), as does the persistent
jump-cutting; even the soundtrack features a strong gallic flavour thanks to
repeated use of accordion music. And when the couple go on a date, they chose to
see Fassbinder's Fear Eats The Soul (1974).
These highbrow references are perhaps best understood as the struggle of a
young filmmaker attempting to outgrow the tag of 'music video director'. In
fact, Thraves' distinctive promo for Radiohead's 'Just' (1995) was an
influential forerunner of the trend towards ambitious, art-infected videos which
characterised late 1990s MTV. But like his contemporaries Jake Scott (Plunkett
and Macleane, 1999) and Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, 2000), Thraves was keen to
produce work for the big screen, and a series of prize-winning shorts proved his
mettle. Admittedly, The Low Down has a far smaller budget than those bestowed
upon Scott and Glazer, provided by British Screen and Film Four Lab, an offshoot
of the broadcaster's successful film financing enterprise designed to foster
innovative work.
The Low Down paints an unflattering portrait of contemporary masculinity. Its
unlikely hero, Frank, is at best enigmatic, at worst inarticulate, aimless and
frustrated. He toys with the idea of buying a flat, but mortgages scare him.
Before long his estate agent girlfriend Ruby starts to scare him too. At the end
of the film, his mate Mike announces that he's getting married. Frank smiles,
but doesn't say anything.
James Caterer
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1. Hungover (3:11)
