Broken

By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.125 cats
Director: Rufus Norris
Starring: Bill Milner | Cillian Murphy | Denis Lawson | Eloise Laurence | Nell Tiger Free | Rory Kinnear | Tim Roth

Country: united_kingdom

Year: 2013

Running time: 91

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1441940/combined

Bruce says: “Yet another Film Movement find although with the cast involved & that the film will open in theaters in March I suppose I would have run across it sooner than later, Still this is a marvelous first-time effort that deserves wide success. Three disparate families live in a cul-de-sac and are infuriatingly getting into each others business. One is an older couple who live with their addled son, who has a tragic background; another is a vile, alcoholic beast who is raising his three despicable daughters; & the 3rd family is headed by Tim Roth, a psychiatrist, who lives with his son & daughter, & a live-in French maid who he’s just started an affair with. His best friend, played by the always great Murphy, has just broken up with the maid so fireworks will ensue. Nonetheless, the focus of the film is Roth’s young daughter Skunk and this is her coming-of-age. It’s fair to make some comparisons with this and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, especially between Skunk & Scout, and Eloise Laurence brilliantly assays her first role into a real star turn. The interactions between the three families are bleak and grim, this is anything but a happy film. It was beautiful seeing Roth play a likable man, for once. as the bulk of his career has been excelling playing villains, often of the worst order. Brilliant asides move the film into rare territory and the moral assurance of the story sets reality askew. 5 cats

Jason says:  “(Aside:  I was the only person in this screening.  Of the five movies I’ve seen in this series, three have been excellent; Boston-area folks should try coming out for it!)

“It’s pretty clear what sort of climax BROKEN will have – main character Skunk has a Chekhov’s Gun attached to her from nearly the moment she’s introduced – but it’s a testament to both how great Eloise Laurence is in the part and how well the filmmakers make everything else going on in her neighborhood that something else can form a rock in the viewers’ stomachs, getting them to mutter that the movie had better not bloody dare…

“Skunk, you see, had been a difficult birth, and is diabetic now; her father Archie (Tim Roth), a London solicitor, helps attend to he injections.  But there’s still plenty of time for her to run about in the summer before starting middle school, making an abandoned caravan into a fort with her older brother Jed (Bill Milner), having her first crush on a boy (Lino Facioli) – and witnessing when Mr. Oswald (Rory Kinnear) beats their other neighbor’s mentally handicapped son Rick (Robert Emms) bloody for supposedly looking at his daughter the wrong way.  Things will be a little awkward when school starts, too, as by then the family’s housekeeper Kasia (Zana Marjanovic) has broken up with her new teacher Mike (Cillian Murphy).

“These threads tie together, of course, and not just because Rick’s father (Denis Lawson) wants to hire Archie to sue Bob Oswald. Director Rufus Norris and screenwriter Mark O’Rowe (working from Daniel Clay’s novel) set the film’s size appropriately; there’s familiarity and connection among neighbors without this cul-de-sac becoming a hermetically-sealed environment.  Things with as little import as a trouble-making set of twins who show up as a running joke can tie
things together without implying that every connection must be important.  That’s important, because this coming-of-age movie is about learning to recognize complexity, even if one doesn’t understand it.

“That sort of movie demands a strong performance in its center, and Eloise Laurence is sneakily excellent.  Skunk isn’t especially precocious – in fact, she’s probably much less so than the typical protagonist of this sort of movie – but she’s not stupid, either, and what hooks the story does give her are fairly specific to her relationship with her father.  And yet, by the end, the audience has a sense of who she is – trusting, a little spoiled, tending to carry the way she’s been hurt around without making a scene. She’s good at looking at things and giving the impression that she’s filing them away until she’s got something to connect them with.

“It’s a relatively subdued way of playing a kid in turmoil, and it’s interestingly reflected in Robert Emms’s performance.  Rick is the sort of mentally handicapped young man often described as having the mind of a child, but it’s not immediately obvious; he plays the part without obvious affectation initially, just the occasional hesitation when speaking, which brings some interesting ambiguity to how he gets more twitchy when put through the wringer.  He’s just one part of an ensemble giving frequently subdued but precise performances: Tim Roth, for instance, is as low-key as I can remember him as the somewhat doughy, compassionate Archie; even when he raises his voice to scold Skunk or defend someone wrongfully accused, he’s eminently reasonable, though there’s no doubting the depth of the character’s emotion (see also: Cillian Murphy).  It puts Rory Kinnear as the quick-to-anger Bob Oswald in even starker relief, although Kinnear and the filmmakers are able to keep him just short of monstrous.  The same cannot necessarily be said of the Oswald girls, but they are such fantastically rotten little monsters – especially Martha Byant as Sunrise, who quickly becomes the terror of her & Skunk’s school – that it’s quite easy to relish them for nailing the role that they play.

“Norris makes good use of his ensemble, not favoring the internationally known names over the relative newcomers, and while
there are a few too-precious bits, the bulk of the movie is a well-oiled machine in how it builds up Skunk’s world without seeming too directed or aimless.  The filmmakers put darkness in the movie from the very start, but they’re good about not letting it set the tone or overwhelm the story until later.  It may a bit much for some viewers in terms of not necessarily feeling like the movie they bought a ticket for, but it does exert a grip on the audience that conveys the panic of a worried parent as well as anything can.

“There are moments within that panic when Norris and company are much more clever than they need to be, especially since their ability to grab the audience by the gut comes from how Laurence and company are able to make people quite fond of Skunk without a lot of gimmicks.  That sheer quiet effectiveness makes BROKEN good enough to earn its way to where it takes the audience, even if they don’t want to go there.  4.75 cats

Seen 24 June 2013 in the Regal Theatre (Gathr Previews Presents…, digital)”

Toni says:  “It is in the Gathr series which also screens at the Cable Car here in Providence, RI and Film Movement for series which if you don’t have that DVD you can still stream as a member.

“I have liked some of the other films I saw in the Gathr series (and Film Movement) were quite good thus far.  I love the shorts
selected with the Film Movement DVDs in case I have missed them in my short film obsession :).

“I was a bit disappointed about this one though…I thought the story was disjointed…Was this supposed to be about the children or the adults; I wish it decided where to go with it because I would have preferred or was misled to think this would be more about the lead children…I also thought it was unnecessarily melodramatic at times…I could see that some people would like it but I expected a coming of age film or a good thriller and saw neither in my viewing…The children’s performances were top notch though…  2.5 cats”