The Unloved
Lauren Socha in The Unloved
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Monday, 15, Feb 2010 09:59
Directed by Samantha Morton, out February 19th in cinemas, starring Molly Windsor, Lauren Socha, Robert Carlyle, Craig Parkinson, Susan Lynch, 106 mins.
What's it all about?
After a brutal beating at the hands of her father (Carlyle) and with nowhere else to go 11-year-old is placed in a Nottingham care home and after a shaky start, taken under the wing of streetwise 16-year-old Lauren (Socha). Life inside the home is just as dark as the outside world, however, and Lucy might not be safe in either environment.
As an example...
"I don't understand why I can't live with my mummy." - Lucy
"Unfortunately at this moment it's the courts that are going to have to decide that." - Social worker
What the others say
"This isn't a conventional film, but a campaigning document, an act of solidarity and a bold, emotionally piercing personal statement." - Trevor Johnston, Time Out
"Poignant, perceptive and unrelenting, this may be bleak, like all great drama, it is ultimately uplifting as well." - Phil de Semlyen, Empire
So is it any good?
Screened on Channel 4 last year, Samantha Morton's first film behind the camera never fails to entrance the viewer, even when we'd almost certainly rather look away. Though its budget and - Robert Carlyle and Susan Lynch's brief parts aside - relatively unknown cast smack of the small screen, The Unloved is wholly deserving of a cinema release. The superb Molly Windsor provides a traumatised eye on the disorientating adult world faced by children placed in the care system, with countless scenes shot with the cold tension of a horror and older voices echoing like malevolent imaginary friends. Morton also reveals that as well as being a tremendously talented actress, she's also the holder of a fine cinematic eye, with stark framing heightening the parallels between the boring, bubbling with conflict worlds of prison and the care home.
Its subject matter means the film is unavoidably grim and Morton's decision to keep the father's brutal beating of Lucy offscreen - its impact conveyed through the shocking thwacks of a belt - is hugely distressing. But a raw and honest climax confirms that this semi-autobiographical story was a testing labour of love for the director that while frequently tough to watch remains an essential document of a forgotten sector of Britain.
8/10
Lewis Bazley