Young Adam
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Actor: Emily Mortimer, Ewan McGregor, Jack McElhone, Peter Mullan, Tilda SwintonDVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 2.35:1
Running Time: 98 minutes
Published: 2004-09-01
DVD Release Date: 2004-09-14
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Young Adam
DVD Review: Young Joe Smoe and he likes it that way
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm ammending this from my origninal review at the bottom*
Ok first let's get the artsy people out of the way.
I can appreciate good cinematography. There comes a time when we have to cross a line between establishing the bleak, sameness of a situation and calling it setting up the backdrop of the shot. I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say that the weather and lighting conditions where they were shooting are pretty much the same every single damn day of the year, with a break or 2 here and there, so let's drop the camera work right now because that is hardly what this film is about.
A while back I read that Ewan McGregor had taken an awful role that was basically about nothing and went nowhere but he had a lot of sex in the movie. Being a Ewan fan I found this rather intriguing. I had actually almost forgotten about it until it showed up on cable one night. Seeing it co-starred Tilda Swinton I thought what I read must have been exaggerated, because she is known for choosing her roles careully.
The story unfolds as the men, Ewan and Ela's husband Lars, find a nearly nude dead body of a young woman whilst they are delivering goods on Ela's barge in Scotland. The body is handed over to the authorities and we are privy to domestic life aboard the barge. A child and the heavy drinking of her husband leaves Tilda Swinton's character less than satisfied, and Ewan's Joe is soon to take full advantage of her lonliness.
Events begin to unfold both in present time and flashback and we learn that Joe, while not a murderer, is not completely innocent in the death of the young girl they found drowned at the beginning of the movie. We also find that he is not an ardent lover as Ela seems to believe, just an opportunist who will have sex with any woman who is willing and ready.
On the outside he seems an everyman, just a regular Joe, but inside seethes a failed writer who seemingly hates women and in one repugnant, sadistic scene belittles the poor woman who is too in love with him to see who he really is.
He makes a half-hearted attempt to be decent at times but it is robotic, more or less going through the motions. He is willing at very turn to make his mess and walk away from it untouched. He is a repulsive person behind the facade of the everyman.
I cannot see what drew either Ewan McGregor or Tilda Swinton to doing this film. They have scenes of sex, not lovemaking, and it is as though the director said "Tilda, stick your belly out so we know you've had children, make your body as ugly as possible"-and this is a beautiful woman!
A lot of people play up Ewan McGregor's nudity in films. By now they should get over it. He's showed skin in almost everything he has done and he does in this movie also. It lasts about 1 second and looks the same as it always does. I'm never surprised that he does nudity, but I'm surprised when he takes on a role like this.
This film has no redeeming merits at all except that you are repulsed enough to keep watching it the entire way through.
*I have to say that for some reason as repulsed as I am by this movie I still watch it over and over. It has an almost mesmerizing quality to it. Having met Ewan McGregor in person he looks more himself in this than he has in any film he's been in in a long time. Maybe it is because the setting is so dull and unchanging, (it's like that in reality too) or that the people are so washed out. I don't know. I think it has to be the acting although so minimal it is almost not even there that draws one in.
Nothing has changed about the characters. I still find them all to be either faintly or grotesqly repulsive; Joe's final "triumph" more obscene every time I view it.
However, because there is something there that has this effect I'm going to bump it up to 4 stars. I still caution anyone with an easily troubled conscious (maybe that is my problem) about seeing this film. Spoiler alert-To give you an idea one scene involves a recent widow in an alley with Joe. After a few seconds she bends down to pick up her still burning cigrette complaining about the mess Joe's made of her as he zips up. They then return to Ela'a barge for tea.
That is typical of the lack of morality in the characters. You're disgusted by them at the same time you are fascinted by them.
So watch at your own risk, just don't expect a happy ending-unless you're Joe.
Description of Young Adam
Few movies are as vividly tactile as "Young Adam". The way the cold blue light of Scotland envelopes everything--wooden bannisters, rippling water, rough fabric, coal soot caked in human skin, and flesh itself--makes you feel like you could reach out and touch it all. A failed writer named Joe (Ewan McGregor, "Big Fish"), slumming on a coal barge, finds himself drawn to barge's owner Ella (Tilda Swinton, "Orlando", "The Deep End"), despite the presence of her husband Les (Peter Mullan, "My Name is Joe"). But Joe's passion is haunted by the girl he's abandoned (Emily Mortimer, "Lovely & Amazing"), whose memory becomes more and more powerful as a murder trial unfolds. The acting in "Young Adam" is magnificent, without affectation yet completely affecting. It's a moody film, but its deep engagement with its characters and the world they inhabit will make a lasting impression. "--Bret Fetzer"Bestsellers in DVD
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