Ray & Liz

It think it is unfair to think of Ray and Liz as wholly unlikeable because it is a surface level interpretation and it unsympathetic view on the audience's part to what drives the character's negligence. Clearly, they are two deeply flawed characters whose lack of humanity, or negligence, is driven by their constant battle to survive in a very bleak era.

There is nothing admirable about these two characters but the film definitely delivers a strong social message about the fate of the vulnerable in a society that ordinarily and continues to look down on them without remorse. In that sense, you begin to understand that Ray and Liz are the way they are because society has treated them cruelly and swept them out of view.

Richard Billingham's "Ray & Liz" is worthy to take its place next to the early films of both Terence Davies and Bill Douglas and like their films is largely autobiographical. It is a picture of Billingham's abusive, alcoholic family, his parents, Ray and Liz, and his extended family and naturally it's depressing but also not without a grim humour and as befits someone who has made his name as a photographer is full of images that might best be described as depressingly beautiful.

There is an old saying, write about what you know and in terms of world cinema it's those films that home in to a specific aspect of their country's national identity that work best. Britain has always been a class-conscious nation and that's probably why those films that dealt honesty with working class life and made in the early sixties, (the Kitchen Sink movies), that have remained freshest in the memory. It was something that Davies and Douglas knew only too well and which Billingham has now adopted.

This is a film in which every tiny detail is perfectly realised; the cheap artificial flowers, ornaments and paintings that Liz uses to brighten a home where the wallpaper is peeling off the walls and dogs pee on newspapers on the floor. Forget about something like "The Favourite", this is the best designed film of the year. It's also superbly played by its totally unknown cast. Ella Smith is particularly good as the neglectful Liz, someone perhaps more deserving of our pity than our scorn. Ray and Liz may be products of their society but Billingham, unlike Ken Loach, isn't really too concerned with the wider social picture but with the personal. This is his home movie and it's a deeply felt one.

Dark, upsetting and slightly depressing, brought about by excellent actors, filming and direction. Like the genre of plays like the birthday party, entertaining mr sloane and abigails party it combines tragic with everyday people's lives.

Talented photographer Richard Billingham's stark, witheringly unsentimental autobiographical feature about a grossly dysfunctional northern working class family is a consistently downbeat, sporadically sardonic, frequently fascinating debut that most definitely doesn't spare the rod, nor spoil the child! Watching this unsettling, bravely unfiltered dissection of an increasingly dissolute family 'living' in abject squalor, while wrenching, ultimately proves to be a curiously edifying experience. Sadly, the decades separating the initial release of Ken Loach's no less astringent 'Poor Cow' and 'Ray & Liz' somewhat bluntly suggests that all too little has improved regarding the rudimentary living standards of the many impoverished UK residents currently faltering below the poverty line. 'Ray & Liz' is a claustrophobic Kitchen Sink drama, often lingering with uncomfortable intimacy within their more indelicate nooks and crannies, and yet, empathic cinematographer Daniel Landin's exquisite photography has a painterly, mesmeric quality, drawing you ever deeper into this damaged couple's crepuscular existence.

Poverty and despair are depicted in painful, beautiful detail in this autobiographical debut film from Richard Billingham. The performances are subtly brilliant and the overall attention to detail makes this feel more like a documentary at times. As such there's not really a story here but a glimpse into the lives of a dysfunctional family at a very specific time and place. This is not easy viewing but stands as one of the best films I've seen in years.