This is England and Dead Man’s Shoes director Shane Meadows ventured south to London from his heartland in the Midlands for the first time for this slight but affecting comedy-drama. The film centres on a cross-cultural friendship between two teenagers while also examining a fractious father-son relationship.
Somers Town lacks the dramatic power of his earlier works but offers plenty of small pleasures, wry, salty humour and superb acting. The title refers to the grim working-class neighbourhood around St. Pancras train station, where the Eurostar high-speed rail link to Paris launched in 2007.
The area is home to Polish immigrants Marek (newcomer Piotr Jagiello) and his alcoholic father Mariuz (Ireneusz Czop), a construction worker at St. Pancras. Marek is lonely, dreadfully missing his mother who remained in Poland after a bitter break-up, and he spends most of his time wandering the streets taking photographs.
Tomo (Thomas Turgoose), a brash, pugnacious teenage runaway from Nottingham, spots him in a café, grabs his photos of a good-looking French waitress, and scarpers. Marek catches him and a friendship quickly develops. After learning that Tomo was mugged by three louts and had his bag and money stolen the night before, Marek agrees to let him stay in their flat, but hidden from his father.
Tomo evidently has no family – presumably he was raised in care – and says he has nothing to go back to in Nottingham. The boys flirt with the waitress (Elisa Lasowski), earn a few quid working for local 'entrepreneur’ Graham (Perry Benson), steal clothes from a laundry, get drunk and trash the flat, which ends badly when Marek’s father arrives home.
Shot in black-and-white apart from the final few minutes, the film has a stark look which is at odds with the mostly whimsical tone, enhanced by the acoustic score by singer-songwriter Gavin Clarke.
