PLAYING AWAY
A film review by Jeff Meyer
Copyright 1988 Jeff Meyer
See at the Seattle Film Festival: PLAYING AWAY (Great Britain, 1986) Directed: Horace Ove Screenwriter: Vijay Amarnani and Caryl Phillips Cast: Norman Beaton, Robert Urquhart, Helen Lindsay, Nicholas Farrell
This is one of those little character films which are such a delight to find at the festival; they pick you up for a couple of hours and let you down, emotionally and mentally sated.
PLAYING AWAY is a study in the contrasts and similarities of two modern British cultures. One is the familiar (to filmgoers, anyway) country village, replate with farmers, the good-hearted local minister, and a few of the gentry. It also has a collection of surly, disaffected teenagers found even in rural Britain. The other culture is represented by a cricket team of West Indian immigrants living in a black London neighborhood. These left their home to come to London and get jobs; now, their jobs are becoming endangered by the poor economy and their race, their children seem to be falling into the morass of urban blight, and they miss the islands greatly.
The two cultures run into one another when the villagers invite the city team for a weekend cricket match in their town. The two groups meeting tends to bring out the best and worst in several people; much of it is very funny, but some of it is frightening and not at all attractive. What makes it work, as either comedy or drama, is how carefully the characters are drawn within the 100 minutes of the film. Each member of either team is brought to the point where, at the end of the film, you feel as if you know them all quite well. What makes the film so much fun is watching how the various characters from both "sides of the fence" deal with each other (or fail to); scenes like the meeting between Willie Boy, the leader of the city team, and the local squire, are a delight; some people find they have much in common, while others find they have nothing (or so they think).
The cricket match itself at the end is something of an anti-climax, and suffers from slo-mo sports sickness a bit too much. But it never lags below a rating of good, and the ending gives you some faith that the good in people can find the good in other people, no matter how great the difference of birth and background are.
Rating: $3.50 - $4.00 film. Perfect for an early weekday or a Sunday evening.
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
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