This Year's Love
UK 1999
Reviewed by Philip Kemp
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
The wedding celebrations of two London-based Scots - tattooist Danny and dress-designer Hannah - turn sour when he discovers she's slept with the best man. They split up rancorously. While drowning her sorrows, Hannah is picked up by painter Cameron. Danny offers Hannah's honeymoon flight ticket to Marey, an airport cleaner and sometime pub-rock singer. They wind up in bed together. Liam, who sells vintage comics from a Camden Lock unit beside Hannah's dress shop, meets upper-class-dropout, single-mother Sophie in a cybercafe. They too start an affair. Hannah tires of Cameron's infidelities; Danny's obsessive jealousy alienates Marey; Sophie constantly puts down the insecure Liam and finally gives him the push.
A year later. Cameron and Marey meet at an art auction. Danny meets Sophie at a dating club. Liam, needing a place to live, takes the spare room in Hannah's flat. She tolerates his adoration while starting an affair with a customer, Alice. Sophie gets pregnant, but insists on an abortion. She takes Danny to a party at her parents' house where he causes a scene and they split up. Liam finds Hannah in bed with Alice and attempts suicide. Marey gets wise to Cameron's straying. She joins forces with his latest prospect and they publicly humiliate him.
A year later. Cameron picks up Sophie in a bookshop. Liam saves Marey from some juvenile muggers. Danny, evicted from his tattoo parlour, shoplifts in a supermarket. He's observed by Hannah, now working there since her business failed. Sophie takes Cameron to meet her parents; he announces their engagement. Liam's increasingly unstable behaviour leads Marey to break with him. Sophie tells Cameron she's met someone else. Danny makes a romantic declaration to Hannah at her checkout till. They go off on their postponed honeymoon.
Review
This Year's Love is nothing if not hip. Its lead characters are young, or youngish, living in or around the gaudy multi-cultural bustle of Camden Town, whose colourful swirl repeatedly fills the screen and the soundtrack. They may not have much money, but they have plentiful leisure and engagingly louche occupations like tattooing or selling vintage comics. They have a lot of sex, and when one relationship breaks up another generally soon takes its place. The action is backed by a lively, eclectic mix of tracks, mostly from young British bands.
Altogether, then, a light-hearted, fun experience? Well, not really. David Kane's debut feature as writer and director, while at first seeming to promise a downmarket variant on the fairytale world of Four Weddings and a Funeral, proves an unexpectedly melancholy, even pessimistic exercise. Its ultimate theme is that most of us - especially where sexual relationships are concerned - are locked into recurring emotional patterns that end up destroying our chances of happiness. Though the action is jigged to provide the semblance of a happy ending, it's hard to feel the final love birds' marriage has much future. His rampant jealousy and her roving eye are scarcely designed for peaceful co-habitation.
Similarly, though we leave Marey, Sophie and Cameron on the brink of new liaisons, the indications are that nothing much will change for any of them. None of the previous events seems to have diminished Marey's self-contempt, Sophie's control-freak need to destroy her partners, or Cameron's compulsive philandering - if anything, rather the reverse. Liam, the gentlest and saddest of the lot, ends up beyond hope, sinking into schizoid despair. In this light, the doggedly upbeat song from Marey that closes the film with the line, "We're going to go where we can shine," takes on a bleakly ironic significance.
Still, This Year's Love is far from depressing to watch, thanks to the liveliness of the writing, the resourceful use of location, and above all the freshness and vigour of the performances. Kane has assembled a crack cast, though it creates the impression (perhaps due to the involvement of the Scottish Arts Council) that Camden is largely populated by ex-pat Celts. But Kane makes fine use of them, especially of Catherine McCormack (underused in Braveheart, wasted in Land Girls) as the mercurial Hannah.
If the changing sexual permutations and shufflings come to seem predictable, that's perhaps in keeping with the underlying fatalism of the message. It's maybe indicative that easily the film's least convincing scene is its stab at a feelgood moment: Danny declaring his love to Hannah at the supermarket checkout she's working, with all the queue behind him beaming indulgently (rather than throwing tins of cat food at him). Happiness, one suspects, isn't really Kane's thing.
Credits
- Producer
- Michele Camarda
- Screenplay
- David Kane
- Director of Photography
- Robert Alazraki
- Editor
- Sean Barton
- Production Designer
- Sarah Greenwood
- Music
- Simon Boswell
- ©Entertainment Film Distributors Limited
- Production Companies
- Entertainment Film Distributors presents a Kismet Film production in association with The Scottish Arts Council National Lottery Fund
- Executive Producer
- Nigel Green
- Production Supervisors
- Simon Hardy
- Simon Scotland
- Logistics Supervisor
- Amanda Coulier
- Location Managers
- Greg Jordan
- Louise McManus
- Post-production Supervisor
- Alistair Hopkins
- Assistant Directors
- Richard Lingard
- Stefan Gates
- Lucy Amor
- Script Supervisor
- Laura Goulding
- Casting
- Director:
- Jina Jay
- ADR Voice:
- Brendan Donnison
- Camera Operator
- Rodrigo Gutierrez
- Steadicam Operators
- Alf Tramontin
- Peter Robinson
- Art Directors
- Philip Robinson
- Lindsay Brunnock
- Costume Designer
- Jill Taylor
- Make-up Designer
- Ann Buchanan
- Make-up Artist
- Tamsin Dorling
- Chief Hairdresser
- Francesca Crowder
- Titles Design
- Richard Morrison
- Optical Effects/Motion Control
- Peerless Camera Company
- Music Supervisor
- John McDermott
- Music Editor
- Alan Sallabank
- Soundtrack
- "Just Looking", "The Bartender & the Thief" by Kelly Jones, Jones, Cable, performed by Stereophonics; "Chicken Bones & Stones" by Damon Minchella, Simon Fowler, Oscar Harrison, Steve Craddock, performed by Ocean Colour Scene; "The Other Way" by Lean, performed by Annie Christian; "Stop the Wedding" by Pearl Woods, Freddy Johnson, Leroy Kirkland, performed by Etta James; "Lady Marmalade" by Bob Crewe, Kenny Nolan, performed by LaBelle; "Wicked Ways" by/performed by Garbage; "Sail Away", "Monday Morning", "This Year's Love", "Crazy" by/performed by David Gray; "Your Love Gets Sweeter" by/performed by Finley Quaye-McGowan; "Let's Stick Together" by W. Harrison, performed by Bryan Ferry; "Until It's Time for You to Go" by Buffy Sainte-Marie, performed by Andy Gray; "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)" by Al Green, Mabon Hodges, performed by Al Green; "Feelin'" by Lee A. Mavers, performed by The La's; "Viva (Fever)", "Fast Machine" by Tin Star; "Serious Drugs" by Norman Blake, Joe McAlinden, Douglas Stewart, performed by BMX Bandits; "Honey Boy" by/performed by Terry Evans; "Tape Loop" by Paul Godfrey, Ross Godfrey, Skye Edwards, performed by Morcheeba; "Delta Sun Bottle Neck Stomp" by Chambers, performed by Mercury Rev; "Happy" by Francis Healy, performed by Travis; "I Don't Care" by Raymond McGinley, performed by Teenage Fanclub; "This Life" by Hitchcock, Freeman, performed by Mandalay; "Tichion" by/performed by Junior Delgado; "Get It On" by Marc Bolan, performed by Annie Christian; "Shine" by David Gray, performed by Kathy Burke, David Gray; "He's All I Want" by A. Albanese, M. Bragato, performed by Angel Moon
- Sound Design
- Kevin Brazier
- Stephen Griffiths
- Sound Recording
- Stuart Wilson
- Dubbing Mixer
- Dave Humphries
- Foley
- Artists:
- Jason Swanscott
- Diane Greaves
- Mixer:
- Alan Sallabank
- Tattoo Consultancy
- Sacred Art
- Cast
- Kathy Burke
- Marey
- Jennifer Ehle
- Sophie
- Ian Hart
- Liam
- Douglas Henshall
- Danny
- Catherine McCormack
- Hannah
- Dougray Scott
- Cameron
- Emily Woof
- Alice
- Sophie Okonedo
- Denise
- Nicholas Jones
- James
- Bronagh Gallagher
- Carol
- Jamie Foreman
- Billy
- Annabelle Apsion
- hostess
- Gregg Prentice
- Caleb
- Richard Armitage
- smug man at party
- Matt Bardock
- Billy's mate
- Doreen Blackstock
- nurse
- Paul Blair
- Sweenie
- Clune
- pub drummer
- Matt Costello
- Cooky
- Sacha Craise
- check-out girl
- Angela Douglas
- Annabel
- Amanda Drew
- old friend
- Alastair Galbraith
- Willie
- Andy Gray
- Banks
- David Gray
- pub singer
- Anne Lacey
- Hannah's aunt
- Elaine Lourdan
- Kate
- Eddie Marsan
- Eddie
- Billy McElhaney
- Deaksy
- Ruth Platt
- young girl
- Reece Shearsmith
- tourist
- Jay Simpson
- auctioneer
- Victoria Willing
- ward sister
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Entertainment Film Distributors Ltd
- 9,795 feet
- 108 minutes 50 seconds
- Dolby digital
- Colour by
- DeLuxe