Gregory's Two Girls
UK/Germany 1999
Reviewed by Edward Lawrenson
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Cumbernauld, Scotland, the present. English teacher Greg Underwood has begun to have erotic fantasies about 16-year-old Frances. When she tells him that she'd like to arrange a meeting with him, Greg assumes her intentions are romantic. Obsessed with Frances, Greg ignores the advances of his fellow teacher Bel. At an assignation with Frances, Greg is disappointed when she turns up with her schoolfriend Douglas and explains the reason for the meeting: believing local businessman Fraser Rowan to be manufacturing and exporting torture equipment, Frances and Douglas want Greg to help them get some work experience in Rowan's factory to gather evidence. Despite his reluctance, Greg visits Rowan, an old friend, and arranges placements for the two youngsters.
Greg continues meeting Frances outside school hours. Discovering this, Frances' father reports Greg to the police, but Greg lies himself out of trouble. Later, Frances introduces him to Dimitri, a human-rights activist who convinces Greg of Rowan's involvement in the torture trade. Frances, Douglas and Greg sneak into Rowan's factory where they collect examples of banned torture equipment. Greg goes to Bel's flat to tell her about his eventful night; they end up making love. Greg takes the evidence to a civil servant's in Edinburgh, but is bound to silence by top-ranking officials. Nevertheless, Greg and Frances follow a van full of Rowan's latest torture devices to Stranvaar, where the goods are to be exported. Greg and Frances hijack the van and dump its load into the sea.
Review
There are several powerful resonances produced by the 19-year gap between Gregory's Girl and this, its belated sequel. Writer-director Bill Forsyth incorporates some of them into the film's narrative texture: the new town Cumbernauld, for instance, where both films were shot, doesn't look so new any more. Its once-pristine white-washed modernity is now flaky and dirty grey with age - an apt reflection of Greg's stagnant circumstances. But most of all, what Forsyth's long-delayed follow-up to Gregory's Girl, his breakthrough film, leaves you thinking is how long it's been since he's had a hit. (His last directing credit was for the disastrous Robin Williams vehicle Being Human in 1994.)
Forsyth seems understandably weary of simply tapping into and recycling the success of Gregory's Girl, although Gregory's Two Girls evokes the original from its opening shot. In a changing-room similar to the one where the teenage Gregory had his first few gauche exchanges with Dorothy, Frances appears kitted out, like Dorothy, in football gear. But when the scene is revealed to be the product of Greg's erotic imagination (he's soon having sex with Frances on a pile of gym mats) the mood of gentle tribute quickly sours as we find this is literally the stuff wet dreams are made of.
From Greg's teenage incarnation, lost in adolescent longing, to Mac, the US businessman of Local Hero, beguiled into forgetfulness about his life back home by the charms of a Highland village, Forsyth has always had a rather tolerant attitude to the wistful dreams of his lead characters. But here, he means us to disapprove of the fanciful shell Greg inhabits. The film's final shot - of electronic equipment (components for torture devices) vandalised by Greg and strewn on a rocky beach - echoes the image of Mac's digital watch lost in a pool of sea water in Local Hero. But where Mac's watch was symbolic of his increasingly tenuous purchase on a world he knows he must return to (his job, his home), the beached computers in Gregory's Two Girls signify Greg's belated involvement in the realities of political action after years of armchair utopianism (he watches videotapes of Noam Chomsky to relax).
The trouble with Gregory's Two Girls, however, is that it is far more involving when Greg is at his most adolescent and unworldly than when he attains maturity. Adeptly played by John Gordon-Sinclair, gawky and awkward as ever, Greg - still unable to concentrate in class - remains effectively unchanged from the first film. Forsyth might be making a point about his emotional immaturity, evident in the flicker of relish on his face when he refuses to open his door for Bel's drunken midnight heart-to-heart. But then his progression into messier adult realities is either too neat or too convoluted ever to engage us. Bel, despite Maria Doyle Kennedy's fulsome performance, comes across as little more than a pliant stooge to Greg's myriad insecurities ("You don't want your hole?" she asks at one point). Meanwhile, the industrial-espionage subplot drags on interminably. Almost despite himself, Forsyth can't quite seem to shake off his sympathies for the dreamy, naive Greg of old, and with the exception of a few dark touches Gregory's Two Girls comes alive only when luxuriating in nostalgia.
Credits
- Producer
- Christopher Young
- Screenplay
- Bill Forsyth
- Director of Photography
- John de Borman
- Editor
- John Gow
- Production Designer
- Andy Harris
- Music
- Michael Gibbs
- ©Film Four Ltd
- Production Companies
- FilmFour in association with The Scottish Arts Council National Lottery Fund and Kinowelt Filmproduktion present a Young Lake production for FilmFour
- Line Producer
- Alan J. Wands
- Production Co-ordinator
- Alison Campbell
- Location Manager
- Brian Kaczynski
- Foreign Location Co-ordinator
- Manu Kurewa
- Assistant Directors
- David Gilchrist
- Claire Hughes
- Harry Boyd
- 2nd Unit:
- Tommy Gormley
- Script Supervisor
- Janis Watt
- Casting
- Susie Figgis
- Nina Gold
- Local:
- Aileen Ritchie
- Mari Binnie
- Stephen Docherty
- Steven Duffy
- 2nd Unit Cameraman
- Paul Herley
- Graphics
- Susan Leitch
- Art Director
- Stephen Wong
- Draughtsperson
- Frances Connell
- Costume Designer
- Kate Carin
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Margie Fortune
- Make-up Designer
- Christine Cant
- Make-up Artist
- Sara Kramer
- Titles/Opticals
- Peerless Camera Company
- Soundtrack
- "If I Loved You" by Astrid Williamson, performed by Astrid; "Flower of Scotland" by Roy Williamson; "Gracias a la vida" by Violeta Parra
- Sound Mixer
- Louis Kramer
- Re-recording Mixers
- David Old
- Stuart Hilliker
- Sound Editor
- Douglas Mcdougall
- ADR
- Mixer:
- Peter Geaves
- Animal Trainer
- Dave Stewart
- Cast
- John Gordon-Sinclair
- Gregory Underwood
- Dougray Scott
- Fraser Rowan
- Maria Doyle Kennedy
- Bel
- Kevin Anderson
- Jon
- Martin Schwab
- Dimitri
- Fiona Bell
- Maddy Underwood
- Carly McKinnon
- Frances
- Hugh McCue
- Douglas
- John Murtagh
- headmaster
- Alexander Morton
- Norman, teacher
- William Harkness
- courier
- Albert Coulson
- bus driver
- Paul Birchard
- American executive
- Simon Huh
- Asian executive
- Dawn Steele
- Jan
- Constanzo Cacace
- Italian restauranteur
- Gary Lewis
- Mr McCance
- Anne Kidd
- headmaster's secretary
- Matt Costello
- Detective Gorrie
- Jane Stabler
- Detective Ritchie
- Stewart Preston
- assistant headmaster
- Anne Marie Timony
- Joyce
- Dougie Robertson
- policeman
- Jonathan Hackett
- Deere, government official
- Bruce Byron
- Telfor, government official
- Steven Clelland
- minicab driver
- Marc Carapiet
- Jim Creighton
- Rowan's bodyguards
- Sadie Miller
- Bel's neighbour
- Douglas Robertson
- Michael O'Brien
- Rowan's van drivers
- Karen Sinclair
- Amanda Malcolm
- Alex Reape
- Stephen Duguid
- Kirstie Anderson
- Isobel Melville
- Nicole Strachan
- Greg Lloyd
- Dawn Henderson
- Sara Kellie
- Greg's pupils
- Gillian Alexis Lloyde
- Lois MacKenzie
- Suzanne Craig
- Vivienne Henderson
- Jane Coleman
- cheerleaders
- Aisling Friel
- Nadia Coia
- Julie Quinn
- Janine Sheridan
- the Rowan girls
- Gabriel Alhucema
- Americo Alhucema
- Angela Alhucema
- Pamela Alvarez
- Hugo Alvarez
- Esther Fernandez Araque
- Hernando Fernandez Araque
- G. Mandela Fernandez Araque
- Aimara Reques
- Eliana Roditis Ritchie
- Gabriel Smith-Reques
- Patricia Toledo-Knothe
- Chilean families
- Amu Logotse
- Suzanne Bonnar
- Nkuli Zikalala
- Clare Robertson
- Tina Clark
- Rozalie Montlouis-Gabriel
- Chas Fraser
- E.M. Valentine
- African band
- Rebel
- dog
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Film Four Distributors
- 10,453 feet
- 116 minutes 9 seconds
- Dolby
- In Colour