England without hope

10 April 2012

Paul is a salesman on the way down. He may have been Salesman of the Year in 1984, but his patter - like his sideburns - is left over from an earlier era. He stinks of provincial downward mobility, and, if we could smell it, we would also be repulsed by the stale beer on his rancid breath.

For Paul is an alcoholic and, as part of his sentence for drink driving, he has to attend an alcoholmanagement course.

Not that Paul is going to let Ian (Jonny Phillips), the little prick who's running the gig, rupture his plans for making the Big One; the sale that will put him back on top and sort everything out: his toiletbound career and his pissed-upon family life.

Paul, as played by Rupert Procter, is a figure of high definition; as he twitches and blusters, pukes and dissembles, he perfectly conveys the classic conundrum of the alcoholic personality: the grandiose ego manipulated by a pathetic individual.

Paul is the Wizard and Nottingham is his Oz. A Nottingham of night-time bypasses lit by orange halogen; a Nottingham of smoky pub interiors, where adipose businessmen blurt karaoke; a Nottingham of distempered brick community centres at the end of privet-lined passageways.

Ian chucks Paul a big red ball and commands him to talk about his feelings - but Paul wouldn't know what a feeling was if it bit him on the arse.

Not that Paul is alone in all of this. He has his accomplices - enablers, as they are termed in the jargon.

There's twitchy Jimmy (Greg Chisholm), the son of a recently deceased vending machine distributor. Jimmy has inherited a defunct business and a bad case of shock. Instead of allowing himself to mourn, he, like Paul, is flailing about in a whirlpool of managementspeak, spouting about assets he doesn't have and non-existent opportunities.

Not even his bereaved mother, Liz - herself partial to a drop or 50 - knows where he goes each day. She thinks he is on a business course.

Then there's Mark the stoner (Mark Devenport), an amiable kidult with a penchant for video games and spliff. He takes to Ian's role-play as if he had been given an opportunity to tread the professional boards. "They're like tiny, tiny plays," he blethers. But then it

is all the same to him: delusions of adequacy and fantasies of owning his own Midlands-bestriding minicab firm.

Finally there is Richard Stevens (Hywel Bennett), the kingpin - a dealer in property and unsuccessful purveyor of Asian brides.

With his tufted eyebrows and whiskery smile, his plump belly and his lithe insouciance, Richard is the Top Cat. The Top Cat with the creamy pelf which all the other moggies want to get their paws on.

One for the Road is a black comedy, a social satire, and a Jacobean tragedy in which the principal corpse is that of hope itself.

It is a dark little gem of a movie, and tyro writer/director Chris Cooke displays unerring feel for its milieu, which bears comparison with the Danny Boyle of Trainspotting or the Jane Campion of Sweetie. But this is Trainspotting meets The Office, it is the Crossroads Motel on wacky baccy, it is a paean to an entire slice of Middle England, unobserved by cameras save for those of city centre CCTV systems.

Shot by Nick Gordon Smith on digital stock, One for the Road has the natural feel of a jaded eye encrusted with bilious wakey-dust. The scenes either swim out of the haze, bleary and watery, or else confront you with widened pores, oozing the sweat of desperation.

Paul believes that "a business meeting can be held anywhere". So he holds them in the pub in between alcohol-management sessions, and even in a Forestry Commission plantation, when the quartet are sent paintballing with a gang of recidivist TWOCers (Taking Without Owner's Consent).

It doesn't matter to him that he is living in a tent, having been chucked out of the family home by his wife, Mary (Penn Linfield), the important thing is to stop Jimmy being distracted by the pretty barmaid, Eve (Micaiah Dring), with her tales of Thailand and escape.

The plot the three men hatch to deprive Richard of his dosh proceeds towards its inevitable conclusion, with all the peripheral vision and rearview hindsight of a pissed salesman at the wheel of a Mondeo.

WHEN the four men finally descend on Richard's bucolic retreat, piloted by Dave (a sublime performance by Johann Myers), Mark's disaffected cabbing partner, we know we are in for a night of serious drinking and a dawn of awful consequences.

The British film industry - such as it remains - is all too often distracted by the escapism implicit in high production values. Yet the matted reality of Britain cannot be conveyed by such a high gloss.

In a way, this film is a peculiar allegory of the dilemma of British film-makers, who, perforce, end up as fantasists pursuing a money man, as long as they remain here.

When new directors do emerge, they are all too often snaffled up by Hollywood, or by a Hollywoodised production, where the involvement of "star" actors determines the investment. There are notable exceptions to this - but they are exceptions.

I'm not saying that Chris Cooke should hang on to his street credibility if it means ending up in a cul-de-sac, but, after such a stylish - and authentically bruising - debut as this, it's certainly a nailbiter knowing whether or not he will take the commercial shilling certain to be offered him.

One For The Road
Cert: cert18

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