London Kills Me

THE AREA AROUND PORTOBELLO MARKET is maybe the most attractive and alive part of London - the cosmopolitan craziness reminds you of New York, Paris or Berlin. At the same time the destructive forces of the city have gathered there; drugs, violence, swindlers and destitution. The film is a slice of this life, a story about homeless youths trying their luck, about the relationship between the two young men Clint and Muffdiver and their girlfriend Sylvie.

Comment:
HANIF KUREISHl'S DEBUT as a film director with London Kills Me is naturally one of the year's major events in British film. He's already established himself as a screenwriter with the scripts for My Beautiful Launderette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, as one of Thatcherism's foremost observers, especially when it comes to the life among London's many minorities.
These films were characterized by a neon-shimmering and dreamlike, but caustic realism, the quick dialogue was borrowed from the big city plethora and the course of events were marked by aggressive confrontations, concisc observations and last, but not the least, unsentimental and refreshing emotions. Kureishi's material has been transposed on to the film medium with the help of Stephen Frears' skillful, sometimes brilliant, handling of a strict and classical cinematography.
It's not unexpected, when Kureishi himself sits in the director's chair, that the story is relegated to the background. The young Clint Eastwood's - the name refers both to the actor and the reggae-artist - search for a pair of shoes he has to wear in order to get work as a waitor is only an excuse, a Hitchcock-like MacGuffin, so that Kureishi will be able to create a fresco-like anthropological study of life among some unemployed drug abusers in London's Notting Hill. Here, dilapidating Edwardian buildings are mixed with Indian super-markets and on Portobello Road's Electric Cinema, the oldest movie-theater in England, a cartoon-like drawing sits in state, showing Anita Ekberg in one of her more daring poses from Fellini's La dolce vita.
Kureishi's approach is completely free from condescending moralism, otherwise so common for the genre. Instead this is a more good-natured celebration of the small person and his problems. The moral judgment is left to the viewer.
Like many other contemporary British filmmakers, or writers - Terence Davies, Derek Jarman or Dennis Potter - Kureishi speaks the language of the people with frequent and loving allusions to the most cherished icons in popular culture. Clint's stepfather, an old Teddy Boy, drives a 1959 Cadillac and dresses in Elvis' Las Vegas outfit when he chases away Clint's drug friends. Muffdiver, the leader of the gang, in his turn is a pastiche on Dodger in Dickens' Oliver Twist, a character straight out of the early 70s King Crimson-concerts.
London Kills Me might be most worth seeing for its settings, dialogue and basic empathy - it's also exactly what you could expect from Hanif Kureishi. _ ERIK HEDLING