Brakes

At its core Brakes is about predetermination and portent: if you had an idea of what the future would bring, would you still continue down that path? Stephen King tackled this in The Dead Zone and there’s always the question that if you knew that child would grow up to be Hitler…

Mercedes Grower wrote (with cast input) and directed this interesting variation on those themes, though this is about love, friendship, couples and relationships with the stories presented break-up first with the last act saved for the initial encounters. The nine vignettes cover a wide range of familiar scenarios and social stratas. Most people even if they have not been here, will recognise at least some of the situations.

As with most portmanteau films there’s some good and not so good segments. The stronger ones are the crumbling relationship of middle-aged upper-middle class couple Brine (Kerry Fox) and Rhys (Roland Gift), and the May to December tale of Alan (Peter Wright) and Livy (Julia Davies) as an older director and borderline hopeless actress who auditions for him. The former has a palpable atmosphere of festering mistrust and secrets, while the latter is an initially fun relationship that has pretty much run its course. Impeccable acting throughout with Davis’s Livy painfully poignant.

Of the others there is the comically desperate Elliot (Julian Barnett) turning up and openly stalking Raymond (Oliver Maltman) after a drunken tryst in Spain, after which he gets the wrong idea. Rather darker (and insightful when seen in context of their meeting) is builder Johnny (John Milroy) and his brief liaison with fashionista Kate (Siobhan Hewlett), his persistence, social comments, and physical imposition.

Mercedes Grower herself plays Layla, the heavily pregnant girlfriend of prize berk Daniel (Noel Fielding) sporting tight skimpy shorts, dribbling a football and working in a Soho porn shop. This is pretty much what you would expect from Fielding and the scene in the public toilets is rather good.

Made on less than a shoestring, and relying on goodwill from everyone involved, it’s very rough around the edges, with the mixed media visuals adding to the guerrilla improvisational aspect of it. As a comedy it’s very inconsistent, raising some wry knowing smiles rather than real laughs. The main thing is that for all its nuts and bolts construction it hangs pretty well as a whole.