Brakes

Dir: Mercedes Grower

2016

**

Brakes feels more like an actors workshop than a film, a modern re-telling of 1999’s This Years Love but with no budget and no script. I have no problem with the low budget – quite the opposite in fact as the locations are real places and are ultimately unimportant, famous locations tend to detract from films such as this – but I do have a problem with the no script bit. It boasts quite a strong cast of exciting British actors including Julian Barrett, Noel Fielding, Kerry Fox, Roland Gift, Oliver Maltman, Kate Hardie, Paul McGann, Julia Davis, Peter Wight and writer/director Mercedes Grower. The concept is simple, the film is the antidote to most modern rom-coms in that it starts at the end, ie. the break up and ends at the beginning. The film is composed of several short scenarios, each featuring a different couple, as we see the end of their relationships, before revisiting the couple to see how they met in the first place. Some scenarios are better than others but I can’t say any are particularly great. The first scenario follows a drunkard night abroad that saw Oliver Maltman’s heterosexual character accidentally sleep with Julian Barrett. It’s an awkward and somewhat surreal comedy lead by Barrett’s wonderful imagination. The film doesn’t ever really get as good again. There are displays of tremendous acting but the performances tend to get lost in the lack of story. The cast are all great actors, it’s just that they’re not all great improvisers. Bad improvisation is killing comedy at the moment all over the world. It hardly ever works and most of the time it’s the visual equivalent of scratching one’s fingernails down a chalkboard. I can’t really fault the idea, or any of the performances really, it just doesn’t work very well and is far from engaging. The crew and cast gave the time for free, all being friends and acquaintances of Mercedes Grower. The problem is that all anyone could give was a couple of days, so what you see is basically the first take. I can’t help but think that the same film made up of take fours and take fives could have been something remarkable and a bit special. The direction is much the same as the stories, there are moments of visual glory and others where it looks like a naughty child has run off its parents phone. The stories did get me thinking and I began to wonder whether the initial meetings all featured tell tale signs that the relationship wouldn’t last or were all entered into under the wrong conditions but I remembered that they’re all made up as they went along. I think improvised films like this are great for young or inspiring actors (or both) but there is also something rather disposable about them. I found nothing to cherish. Some lines were clever, some took me by (pleasant) surprise and a few (very few) made me laugh but I had no invested interest and never once did the film intrigue me. I saw all of the break ups and had absolutely no interest or even the slight bit of curiosity of how any of the relationships started. It’s not much of a film really. It doesn’t fit together particularly well, it’s a little disjointed but there are glimmers of something – unfortunately I think they’re glimmers of something it could have been.