I've Been Trying to Tell You

I was intrigued by this as I am fond of the band st etienne. I guess the music is 'pleasant' at best. This really is like a fashion shoot come to life. The kind you used to see in Vice magazine UK in the early 2000s when photographers became obsessed with fetishising what they thought were the young working class. Models in achingly normal poses in bleached out colour with close up freckled faces. It's all very beautiful for about 5 seconds and then you want to turn the page. Not only did this quickly become like watching a showreel for a director pitching to and agency it also began to resemble part of the director's private stash. I like a writhing, muscular disaffected young man as much as the next guy but this just got boring. What ever narrative struggling to squeeze out was drowned in a haze of beautiful young things. I am of this era but I didn't connect to any of it. I must have gone to the wrong parties.

As an enthusiastic St Etienne fan for both their music and their various associated film projects (concept films, documentary soundtracks, song videos etc) which are almost always worth watching and exquisitely produced, I was anticipating great things here.

But this one is pants. The album is pleasant but bland - they've done much better - and the film makes a token effort at being a road movie around scenic and industrial bits of Britain, so some nice shots and good cinematography. A few quirky bits, with an off-beat humour - for instance there's a beautifully composed bubble-blowing sequence

However the director seems to have a fascination for topless young male models, inserting several long slow-mo sequences of athletic bare-chested youths looking moody and lingeringly exhibiting their torsos for no real reason and without any connection to the music. So unless you share the director's fixation, it all becomes fairly boring and otherwise empty. Not worth seeking out..

My copy - from the limited edition CD/DVD package - did not play properly, and online forum comments elsewhere suggest this is a common experience.