![]() How Oliver deals with this marital discord while trying to become "the world's best boyfriend" (a noble but near-impossible task for a 15-year-old) is the crux of it all. Lloyd sits by, sipping lemon water and staring balefully, beautifully, into the middle distance, as only Noah Taylor can so successfully do. But Considine doesn't rest on that alone, giving Graham layers of icky hair-gelled, faux-karate-kicking, leather-pantsed anti-charm for Jill to fixate on. Graham's rainbow-shellacked, shag-carpeted van says so much about his character. On the parallel adult-drama plane, Oliver's parents are caught in a triangle of grotesque proportions when Jill's ex-boyfriend and new-age aura-reader, Graham (Paddy Considine), moves in next door. Wearing a brilliant red overcoat and lighting matches in the woods, one by one, who wouldn't find her enchanting? Unfortunately, she's a bit of a bully, which leads to their early meet-cute, involving a victim, a large mud puddle, and photographic sexual revenge. Oliver is fixated on his classmate Jordanna Bevan (Yasmin Paige), she of the dark pageboy hair framing naughty brown eyes. You don't have to feature ridiculous clothes and hairstyles if you don't want to. Just pick a date and go with it, directors-it will be OK. Ayoade is careful not to be too specific with the date, which is kind of an annoying indie-film staple. The era is implied, somewhere in the late 80s/early 90s when hands-off parenting and high-divorce-rate fallout left a kind of Lord of the Flies aftertaste in the memory banks of that generation. Oliver Tate (played by Craig Roberts, with the pie-eyed yet weaselly sincerity of an actual teenager) is at the age when hyper-driven hormones and social idiocy lead to emotional desperation-and comedy! He's a dreamy loner bookworm type with fantasies of importance way out of proportion to his humble social-standing at his school. Oliver, attempting to decipher the mysteries of human behavior If you see it and feel I've steered you wrong, you'll still be filmically enriched-I guarantee it. Shot in watery Wales by director Richard Ayoade (actor/writer known for his TV comedy, "The IT Crowd" in England) and based on a novel by Joe Dunthorne, Submarine is a nicely balanced combination of visual storytelling and deadpan teen angst that arty weirdos and their sympathetic counterparts will find worthwhile. Hopefully I'll be more big-screen inclined for 2012, but in the meantime, here's a coming-of-age flick available on DVD that works out fine on the home viewing system. ![]() Submarine is one of those films I meant to see when it came out, but I have a hard time getting to the movie theater. ![]()
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