Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Somers Town sees Thomas Turgoose returning as the imaginatively named Tom, a young ‘un fleeing from “the North” to Olde London Town, where the streets are paved with, in this case, beatings from a local group of youths. Tom soon finds himself sleeping rough in the titular Somers Town area, but strikes up a friendship with Piotr Jagiello’s Marek, over from Poland with his father, roaming the streets with a camera while his father works on the overhaul of the St Pancras train station to accommodate Eurostar, who funded the film, which may perhaps explain a few otherwise mildly inexplicable moments.
While Tom’s fleeing some family trauma and isolation, Marek has some of his own going on, worrying that his father is spending too much time drinking with his new friends and too little time with him, so it’s perhaps no surprise that the two wind up friends, strained only by falling for the same unattainably pretty waitress at the local cafe, Elisa Lasowski’s Maria, who’s a good five years older. Their various low-key scrapes and escapades mixed with a touch of pathos make up the bulk of the slender running time, and most entertaining they are too.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before – there’s not a great deal of narrative getting in the way of the character interactions here, and indeed almost nothing in the way of drama barring a couple of arguments and a closing act trip to Paris, via the convenient and reasonably priced Eurostar service, consult your doctor to see if Eurostar is right for you. Eurostar should only be consumed as part of a balanced diet, and your Eurostar may be at risk if you do not keep up repayments. Eurostar. It’s what’s for dinner.
Of course, I joke, and while I don’t think I could say that the Eurostar references are anything other than shoehorned in, they’re infrequent enough that this should not be written off as a glorified advert, as you’d be missing what might just be Meadow’s most charming and perhaps also his funniest film. It’s carried in large part by the charisma of Turgoose, whose cheeky wideboy act is a very enjoyable thing to watch, and marries well with Jagiello’s straight man act.
Jagiello also gets the best dramatic moments, his strained relationship with his obviously loving but troubled father and separation from his mother feeling all too believable, and a reminder that there’s more to unite the working classes from around the globe than there is to separate them. Which makes this a bit of a harder watch for near-communist Europhiles like myself in a post-Brexit world, but that’s not a fault of the film. It’s the fault of stupid racists.
Anyway, a charming little film, with great central performances from the young cast and also a very enjoyable supporting turn from Perry Benson’s ersatz Del Boy. It’s well worth putting on your radar. Some films are just nice.