LAST RESORT -----------
When Eastern European Tanya (Dina Korzun) leaves home with her 10-year-old son Artiom (Artoim Strelnikov) to meet her English fiance Mark, she instead finds herself a refugee with no money, no prospects and no passport in "Last Resort."
LAURA:
Artiom realizes that Mark is as neurotic as his mom and knows her hopes will be dashed before she does. Forced by circumstances to declare herself and her son refugees, Tanya and Artiom are trucked off to Stonehaven, a former honky tonk beachside amusement park, where refugees are housed in a cold, dismal, forbidding apartment building behind barbed wire fences policed by guard dogs. Without money, there's no escape - 12 to 16 months before being let out into English freedom, 4-6 months to be officially deported. The only money to be made is by selling goods, blood or yourself, if you happen to be an attractive young woman.
Tanya meets Alfie (Paddy Considine, "A Room for Romeo Brass"), the manager of the local arcade, in search for a phone card to attempt to reach Mark. Shaggy, hangdog Alfie, initially a suspicious character who appears to leech his living off the unfortunates of Stonehaven, changes our opinion of him in a nanosecond with the smile he flashes at Tanya. Once Tanya finally accepts the truth about Mark and sees the friendship that's developed between Artiom and Alfie, a tentative romance begins. However the self realization the whole humiliating experience has brought to Tanya means she won't allow herself to slip back into her old dependencies.
Polish writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski has created a small gem of a movie. His and cowriter Rowan Joffe's creative blending of an almost Kafkaesque political situation with both a gentle love story and a mother's journey to maturity is rivetting storytelling. Visually, he and director of photography Ryszard Lenczewski combines jarringly close hand held camerawork with gorgeously framed, pastel character palletted landscapes. Original music by Max de Wardener adds melancholy with the ghost-like refrains of the shuttered amusement park.
Pawlikowski is also blessed with an outstanding, natural cast. Dina Korzun allows a gamut of emotion to play across her open, innocent face. She's resigned when she goes to pornographer Les (Lindsey Honey, the real life 'most famous pornographer in Britain'), then girlishly amused by the skit he pantomimes for her before ultimately breaking down with the shame of it when finally being broadcast over the internet. She works marvelously well with Considine,whose shaggy charm and reigned in hope make the viewer root for him. Considine makes the combination of a tough realist and a romantic work. Strelnikov is astonishingly confident in his screen debut as the ten year old street smart kid who adapts to a bad situation not of his making.
Thank goodness for the Shooting Gallery - while Hollywood continues to churn out very little of interest, they rescue great little films like "Last Resort" from obscurity.
B+
For more Reeling reviews visit www.reelingreviews.com
laura@reelingreviews.com robin@reelingreviews.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews