<p style="text-align: left;">Written and directed by IT stardom Richard Ayoade and adapted from the book by Joe Dunthorne set in 1997 South Wales, <em>Submarine</em> winds back the reel with striking block colour and caption visuals, a morbidly witty script and an aquarium of distinctive characters.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">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 &#8211; 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&#8217;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).</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">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 &#8220;mildly enjoy[s]&#8221; bullying. In return, the crow-black-cropped-haired girl employs Oliver as a pawn in her scurrilous endeavours to shame Abby Smuts (&#8220;Let&#8217;s call her Sluts.&#8221;). 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.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">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&#8217;s cancer to Oliver. Oliver, however, is already having problems of his own in his attempt to single-handedly rescue his parent&#8217;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.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">The deadpan, dry, British humour continues, however, to be wetted with tears excusing you for laughing when you shouldn&#8217;t at Oliver&#8217;s unruffled bedufflecoated sociopathic flirtations which he dishes out with as much casual elan as flicking out a cigarette stub. The girlfriend&#8217;s father crumbles at the early Christmas dinner whilst the boyfriend&#8217;s counterpart submerges more deeply into his pool of lachrymose enervation.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">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&#8217;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&#8217;s a sailboat you want to have a ticket for. Plug yourself into the Alex Turner soundtrack and enjoy the trip.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">[zombify_post]</p>

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