TO COINCIDE WITH THE RELEASE OF HALLAM FOE AND DIRECTOR DAVID MACKENZIE’S VISIT TO THE IFI, WE’RE SHOWING HIS BREAKTHROUGH FILM YOUNG ADAM.
This faithful adaptation of Scottish ‘beat’ generation writer Alexander Trocci’s novel stars Ewan McGregor as a haunted, existential anti-hero adrift in a world of gossip, moral hypocrisy and tabloid headlines in 1950s Glasgow. In the striking opening scene, the aimless Joe (McGregor) and his pal Les (Peter Mullan) fish a young woman’s body from the murky waters of the Clyde. Joe later takes a job on the barge which Les operates with his dowdy but oddly lubricious wife Ella (Tilda Swinton). Ella and Joe begin a torrid sexual affair, but it soon becomes apparent that Joe is chronically distanced from his emotions. The film develops into an edgy, gritty Scottish riff on Albert Camus’ L’Etranger, with Joe as a drifter searching for authentic experience in a world of sham emotions and repressive morality.