Proponents of intelligence and subtle comedy. Self-proclaimed weirdos and misfits and the people who love them. Film geeks trying to avoid slow-paced, dialogue-heavy films about human emotions that actually avoid delving too deeply into human emotions. How Oliver deals with this marital discord while trying to become "the world's best boyfriend" (a noble but near-impossible task for a 15-year-old) is the crux of it all. Lloyd sits by, sipping lemon water and staring balefully, beautifully, into the middle distance, as only Noah Taylor can so successfully do. But Considine doesn't rest on that alone, giving Graham layers of icky hair-gelled, faux-karate-kicking, leather-pantsed anti-charm for Jill to fixate on. Graham's rainbow-shellacked, shag-carpeted van says so much about his character. On the parallel adult-drama plane, Oliver's parents are caught in a triangle of grotesque proportions when Jill's ex-boyfriend and new-age aura-reader, Graham (Paddy Considine), moves in next door. Wearing a brilliant red overcoat and lighting matches in the woods, one by one, who wouldn't find her enchanting? Unfortunately, she's a bit of a bully, which leads to their early meet-cute, involving a victim, a large mud puddle, and photographic sexual revenge. Oliver is fixated on his classmate Jordanna Bevan (Yasmin Paige), she of the dark pageboy hair framing naughty brown eyes. You don't have to feature ridiculous clothes and hairstyles if you don't want to. Just pick a date and go with it, directors-it will be OK. Ayoade is careful not to be too specific with the date, which is kind of an annoying indie-film staple. The era is implied, somewhere in the late 80s/early 90s when hands-off parenting and high-divorce-rate fallout left a kind of Lord of the Flies aftertaste in the memory banks of that generation. Oliver Tate (played by Craig Roberts, with the pie-eyed yet weaselly sincerity of an actual teenager) is at the age when hyper-driven hormones and social idiocy lead to emotional desperation-and comedy! He's a dreamy loner bookworm type with fantasies of importance way out of proportion to his humble social-standing at his school. Oliver, attempting to decipher the mysteries of human behavior If you see it and feel I've steered you wrong, you'll still be filmically enriched-I guarantee it. Shot in watery Wales by director Richard Ayoade (actor/writer known for his TV comedy, "The IT Crowd" in England) and based on a novel by Joe Dunthorne, Submarine is a nicely balanced combination of visual storytelling and deadpan teen angst that arty weirdos and their sympathetic counterparts will find worthwhile. Hopefully I'll be more big-screen inclined for 2012, but in the meantime, here's a coming-of-age flick available on DVD that works out fine on the home viewing system. Because Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige are enormously likable in their roles, they win our sympathy and make us realize that too many movies about younger teenagers are filtered through the sensibility of more weathered minds.Submarine is one of those films I meant to see when it came out, but I have a hard time getting to the movie theater. It's a self-confident work for the first-time director, Richard Ayoade, whose purpose I think is to capture that delicate moment in some adolescent lives when idealism and trust lead to tentative experiments. It flaunts some stylistic devices, such as titles and sections and self-aware narration, but it doesn't try too hard to be desperately clever. "Submarine" isn't an insipid teen sex comedy. Simultaneously, Oliver very much wants to start having sex - with Jordana Bevan, who for now occupies all the space available in his mind for possible partners. He reports to us that his parents have stopped having sex and explains the ingenious method he used to figure this out. It is Oliver's concern that his mother may be growing too involved with Graham Purvis. Right now, she is entranced by a self-styled mystic named Graham Purvis ( Paddy Considine), who has the gift of holding an audience spellbound with utter nonsense he seems to make up as he goes along. His mother ( Sally Hawkins) is, like many Sally Hawkins characters, earnestly engaged in whatever occupies her. His father ( Noah Taylor) is an oddly quiet man, withdrawn, not quite there in the room. Their relationship begins with earnest exchanges of searching looks in the school corridor, and soon progresses to having dinner at Oliver's house when his parents aren't home. She isn't a tart, nor is she any more experienced than Oliver, but she's more confident. For example, she knows some of them need leadership or they will stew forever in self-doubt. Jordana understands this, and a great many other things about adolescent boys.
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