Movie Review: "Submarine"
Ever since I saw him a few years back on Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and The Mighty Boosh, I've been a bit of a fan of Richard Ayoade. So when I heard he was helming his own movie, adapted from a novel by Joe Dunthorne, I was pretty intrigued. Turns out it was well-received by critics on both sides of the pond, so when it showed up here in Austin, I made the slog to the north side to the art house theater to see what's what.
Submarine is a coming-of-age story set in Wales in the Eighties, in which high-school-age Oliver begins to fall for his classmate Jordana, while at the same time watching the marriage of his parents begin to drift toward the shoals. Our hero is a bit of a misfit with a Holden Caulfield streak. He's at the same time hyper-self-aware and staggeringly obtuse, compassionate and cruel, empathetic and selfish. He's a pretentious intellectual poser who's trying to find out what might make him cool and different and stylish. Also, he's trying to get laid.
And to keep his parents from drifting apart. His father is a clinically depressed marine biologist with low affect, and his mother has for a long time been equally repressed, and is only now beginning to smolder again with the arrival in town of an old flame of hers, Graham, a self-deluded New Age guru.
Jordana herself is a complex object of desire, by turns distant and warm, callous and caring, and with a complicated home life. She is very wary of Oliver, and seems to be using him as much as he wishes to use her.
It's a tale that is told in an exceedingly droll style with plenty of dry voiceovers. In one scene, Oliver narrates that in this critical moment, the biopic of his life should feature a pullback crane shot, but due to budgetary constraints would have to settle for a zoom-out. Cue: zoom-out.
Ayoade handles all of this deftly (he also wrote the adaptation) and strikes just the right tone, never too cloying nor smirkingly ironic. This is definitely a small-scale story involving the standard discoveries of Valuable Life Lessons, and many have deemed Oliver to be an anti-hero, so it may not be to everyone's tastes. I found it to be very solid, and it's most certainly worth catching if it should drift over to IFC video-on-demand or Hulu or some such. Ayoade also recently directed the "Critical Film Studies" episodes of Community, so it looks like he continues to refine his chops. I look forward to his next outing.
Submarine is a coming-of-age story set in Wales in the Eighties, in which high-school-age Oliver begins to fall for his classmate Jordana, while at the same time watching the marriage of his parents begin to drift toward the shoals. Our hero is a bit of a misfit with a Holden Caulfield streak. He's at the same time hyper-self-aware and staggeringly obtuse, compassionate and cruel, empathetic and selfish. He's a pretentious intellectual poser who's trying to find out what might make him cool and different and stylish. Also, he's trying to get laid.
And to keep his parents from drifting apart. His father is a clinically depressed marine biologist with low affect, and his mother has for a long time been equally repressed, and is only now beginning to smolder again with the arrival in town of an old flame of hers, Graham, a self-deluded New Age guru.
Jordana herself is a complex object of desire, by turns distant and warm, callous and caring, and with a complicated home life. She is very wary of Oliver, and seems to be using him as much as he wishes to use her.
It's a tale that is told in an exceedingly droll style with plenty of dry voiceovers. In one scene, Oliver narrates that in this critical moment, the biopic of his life should feature a pullback crane shot, but due to budgetary constraints would have to settle for a zoom-out. Cue: zoom-out.
Ayoade handles all of this deftly (he also wrote the adaptation) and strikes just the right tone, never too cloying nor smirkingly ironic. This is definitely a small-scale story involving the standard discoveries of Valuable Life Lessons, and many have deemed Oliver to be an anti-hero, so it may not be to everyone's tastes. I found it to be very solid, and it's most certainly worth catching if it should drift over to IFC video-on-demand or Hulu or some such. Ayoade also recently directed the "Critical Film Studies" episodes of Community, so it looks like he continues to refine his chops. I look forward to his next outing.