The LuxFilmFest has always been a promoter of films that may be considered outliers. The films that you need to engage with or would require boning up on the cast and crew beforehand. Perhaps even become head-scratchers when the credits roll.
Yes, there’s a place for the blockbusters, the gilt edged spandex clad crowd-pleaser but there’s also room for the curios and the quirky pieces.
Richard Billingham’s dour, booze-soaked, smoke-drenched piece is being described as one to watch and is being talked up as a film that if not on a par with, certainly echoes that of Mike Leigh, Shane Meadows, Ben Wheatley and Ken Loach.
Take a look at the skewed trailer above. This is what would happen if Eastenders were a fly-on-the-wall documentary, was set in Birmingham AND was washed down with an acid blotter (*Drugs are bad but so are family).
So reads the promotional material:
On the outskirts of Birmingham and the margins of society, the Billingham family performs extreme rituals and break social taboos as they muddle through a life decided by factors beyond their control. At times shocking and laced with an unsettling humour, three episodes based on director and photographer Richard Billingham’s memories and world-renowned photos of his parents, Ray and Liz, unfold as a powerful evocation of their relationship, its impact on Richard’s and his younger brother’s life, and the overall experience of growing up in a Black Country council flat.
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Billingham has said of his feature:
“Ray & Liz is a concentration of my own lived experience of growing up in a tower block council flat during Thatcher-era Britain. By sticking true to real life, lived experience and observation I want to recreate a world that can only have come about from my being a witness to it. […] “
“The film is, then, as much of it’s time as it is off the director’s own memories..."In the early 90s I began photographing my father Ray, with the intention of making paintings. I grew increasingly interested in the photographs, in composition, mood, texture, shape and form.”
Though, clearly some of the material is going to shock and appall, there are elements of the every day pain, violence and hate that underpin many a familiar family. The discomfort that may be felt when watching is perhaps down to the viewers realisation that matters cut quite close to the bone.
Odf this Billgham says: “It was not my intention to shock, to offend, sensationalise, or be political, only to make work that is truthful. Ray & Liz is a natural progression from previous photography and video work about my family.”
Mark Kermode, via a review on a recent Radio5 Live show (see below), describes himself as being immersed in a ‘sardonic, sometimes oppressive, sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes funny drama’ that at times ‘is like stepping inside a poem’.
Saving his most glowing praise until then end, Kermode states that he believes that Billingham will go on to make something ‘quite remarkable’ in the future.
