Written and directed by IT stardom Richard Ayoade and adapted from the book by Joe Dunthorne set in 1997 South Wales, Submarine winds back the reel with striking block colour and caption visuals, a morbidly witty script and an aquarium of distinctive characters.
The poetically-spoken protagonist Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) is introduced in an indulgently self-pitying voiceover fantasising about how far-reaching his self-inflicted demise would be – according to him, a candle-lit fanfare igniting the local news, and more importantly, blubbing teenage girls, would feature. We think not. Here is a quirked-up loner with Coraline’s black buttons rattling around in his too-large skull. He soon realises his need to improve his playground coolness and so to socially infiltrate, seeks to win the heart of Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige).
He gives more than a college try to win his lady love including pushing the appointed marshmallow-shaped school target Zoe Preece, his date to a wild west themed school disco, into the pond as Jordana “mildly enjoy[s]” bullying. In return, the crow-black-cropped-haired girl employs Oliver as a pawn in her scurrilous endeavours to shame Abby Smuts (“Let’s call her Sluts.”). Despite the initial turpitude in these playground scuffs, the film moves into a honeymoon period of dates in industrial estates frosted with old fun whims and fancies of matches, swollen faces and toothed grins in a not-too saccharine cubed montage.
Of course, the (alternative) moonbeams and dewdrops do not last long. Jordana, in a rare glassy-eyed moment of emotional vulnerability, breaks the news of her mother’s cancer to Oliver. Oliver, however, is already having problems of his own in his attempt to single-handedly rescue his parent’s marriage. He must grapple with a depressed father (Noah Taylor) with facial incisions more akin to those made in postmortems and a sexually repressed, office-wearied mother (Sally Hawkins) whose former mystic flame has returned (Paddy Considine). The son chooses to focus on the marital domestics but as a favour to Jordana, decides to immolate her dog with rat poison: he read in a child-psychology book that children can more easily acclimatise to filial grief when a pet dies first.
The deadpan, dry, British humour continues, however, to be wetted with tears excusing you for laughing when you shouldn’t at Oliver’s unruffled bedufflecoated sociopathic flirtations which he dishes out with as much casual elan as flicking out a cigarette stub. The girlfriend’s father crumbles at the early Christmas dinner whilst the boyfriend’s counterpart submerges more deeply into his pool of lachrymose enervation.
Here is not simply a nostalgia-drenched, lovesick, teenage story with heart-shaped Mickey Mouse eyes and record players, tape decks and typewriters. Ayoade succeeds in producing a touching rendition of young love, old love, besieged hearts, the grey-numbed drudgery of ordinary life, swivelling emotions, identity, the disturbing nature of intimacy’s tentacles and an epitaph to the long years before our chronically online youths. Watching is a little painful, like bristling past old school photos, or attending a reunion, but it’s a sailboat you want to have a ticket for. Plug yourself into the Alex Turner soundtrack and enjoy the trip.
