Sweet Sixteen

Winning awards and nominations at Cannes, Sweet Sixteen continues director Ken Loach's devotion to social awareness. After using film that directly affected legislative reform (Cathy Come Home) in 1965, his work has spanned the globe and a wide variety of social ills and with very varying fortunes in marketability. Sweet Sixteen looks at adolescent delinquency and the difficulties faced by youths who try desperately to escape the downward spiral that ruins their lives forever. The script, in broad Scots dialect, has an urgency and reality to it. The young actors come mostly from the deprived areas of Western Scotland where the film is set, many of them first-timers and of an age where they would not legally be admitted to the film. The scriptwriter bitterly attacked the BBFC over its ‘18' certificate decision, which was based mostly on the aggressive use of strong language. Meanwhile, English distributors looked at the use of subtitles to help adults south of the border cope.

The story follows 15-year old Liam (played by 17-yr old football player Martin Compston) as a youth who is determined to have a normal family life once his mother gets out of prison. The drug-dealing boyfriend of his mother and his empty-headed companion ‘Pinball', do little to make his quest easier. He opts for ‘means to an end' – a simple enough mistake we feel for a young boy in his circumstances. The consequences, of course, are told with shocking realism. Will the film have the sort of impact that ‘Cathy Come Home' had on homeless laws, and mean more attention is given to real support for youths in disadvantaged areas, rather than simply throwing money at the unwinnable war against drug dealing? The long list of agencies thanked in the closing credits shows how the people in the know pin their hopes on Loach – one of Britain's finest and conscience-filled directors – and one of our most ignored.

Greenock is just down the road from where I live, in fact there's rivalry bordering on enmity between the town where I work, Paisley and Greenock, where this super-realistic Ken Loach film was made. I can therefore completely identify from first-hand observation, although rarely, thankfully from experience, the young, foul mouthed, ill-mannered, drug-dependant, "neds" (non-educated delinquents), who largely populate the film. In fact, in their tracksuit and trainers garb, they still roam the streets today, usually in a zombie-like, drug-hazed trance.

The central character of the film, young Liam and his best-mate Pinball obviously don't go to school and out on the streets, work the margins, both small-time partners, roaming the local pubs selling cigarettes on the fly. Liam's mum is in prison, presumably on drugs-related charges and is due for release soon, but she's in tow with a hardened, petty criminal boy-friend who Liam hates, while also in the family mix is Liam's older sister, a single parent with a young child, who doesn't get on with their mum and bizarrely, a grandfather who's into the same petty crime as the mother's boyfriend. A chance discovery of the boyfriend's drug-stash gives the soon-to-be-sixteen year-old a golden chance to make big money quickly and buy a dream caravan for the family to make a literally clean start but instead leads him into a shady underworld of crime and violence.

Everyone lets Liam down in the film, eventually himself too and at the end, we see him in the time-honoured teenage mixed-up confusion traceable all the way back to Mod Jimmy in "Quadrophenia" and of course the original cause-less rebel of James Dean. The language and violence in the film are extreme but trust me, true to life and the little snippets of humour get steadily darker as the film progresses. Liam's progress from early-on comically getting a reversing truck to run over a policeman's motorbike in a gag used before by Woody Allen to the "sting" he falls victim to when required to stab a man to death in an underworld initiation test shows how far he comes / falls in his journey into darkness.

Filmed in real locations certainly familiar to me and without his sometime trait of attendant sentimentality, I think this is one of the best Ken Loach films I've seen. The acting by the exclusively Scottish and often first-time actors is mostly convincing, with Compston in particular showing the talent that has deservedly kept him in work ever since, although usually in rather typecast strong, silent parts in movies and on TV.

This was a believable, gritty warts-and-all slice of life of a random teenager's nowhere existence in the grey, economic wasteland of latter day West of Scotland. It's grim up north, believe me.

A typically excellent Ken Loach dramatic testament to the plight of the common man, "Sweet Sixteen" brings the forces of adversity and the futility of naive courage into bold relief with this hopeful examination of one boy's struggle to make a better life for himself and his loser mother. Don't look for a happy ending to this dreary, drab but compelling drama which could easily be labeled a "downer". Recommended only for realists into foreign films. (B+)

Note - This film does have English subtitles making it more user friendly for those who find the thick Scot dialect difficult to understand.

From the opening scenes to the closing credits it was wonderful the acting the storyline the direction were wonderful, if this dosent move you nothing will, young Liam and Chantelles scene in the flat was so powerfull,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,a fantastic must see film

The kind of film I usually intend to see but don't end up seeing. In this case I did see it and was handsomely rewarded. I expected it to be a little on the depressing side but found it strangely uplifting. Perhaps because you realise that you don't have it so bad after all. Perhaps because it was extremely tight - with no needless scenes. I half expected the protag's relationship with the girl to result in a teenage sex scene. But it didn't and there's no way it would have fitted in with the film's race towards it's inevitable conclusion. Inevitable but not exactly predictable either. Stunning.