Catch Me Daddy

A medi­um close-up of a face, griz­zled and encrust­ed with god-knows-what. It moves out of the frame and the focus rapid­ly shifts to the mid­dle-dis­tance, on to a foot­ball stick­er that’s been crooked­ly affixed to the side of a kitchen water heater.

Whether this super­fi­cial piece of micro set dress­ing is down to pro­duc­tion design­er Sami Khan, art direc­tor Andy Wat­son, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Rob­bie Ryan or the direc­tor of Catch Me Dad­dy, Daniel Wolfe, (or, indeed, none of the above) is some­thing for those present on the day to decide among them­selves. There’s every chance it was just there in the back­ground, a hap­py acci­dent which came part-and-par­cel with the location.

It’s an eye-catch­ing piece of clut­ter, but it speaks vol­umes about the way the film has been made, its inter­ests, its atti­tudes and its bleak sense of real­ist artistry. It’s the kind of detail that you’d imag­ine see­ing in a pho­to­graph by Mar­tin Parr, whose own work some­times skirts uneasi­ly between fond Hog­a­rthi­an kitsch and arch­ly deri­sive work­ing class mockery.

The film is full of these moments, these ​“foot­ball stick­er” visu­al digres­sions, where the cam­era lingers on a set-up in order for the full detail of the frame to be forcibly stressed. Catch Me Dad­dy even arrives with an accom­pa­ny­ing pam­phlet of still pho­tographs which inspired the shoot­ing of the film, and it does some­time feel like Wolfe is unable to sup­press the dis­ci­pline of cap­tur­ing a sin­gle, pri­mal, sta­t­ic moment in favour of images that flow more seam­less­ly. He gets lost in the background.

The foot­ball stick­er belongs to a sil­ver-toothed drug deal­er who lives alone in a tow­er block. A com­i­cal­ly grotesque wall-mount­ed por­trait sug­gests there was once a fam­i­ly there, but they’ve packed off to make way for an exot­ic snake col­lec­tion and pock­ets of coke stashed in the set­tee pil­lows. These small stress­es speak of a his­to­ry that exist­ed pri­or to the time­line of the film, flesh­ing out a character’s entire past in a sim­ple visu­al cue. It’s a film pri­mar­i­ly about the dif­fer­ent ways chil­dren drift away from their par­ents, and this lone­some push­er becomes anoth­er dis­mal iter­a­tion of this human rite.

The shot works because it’s essen­tial­ly empa­thet­ic, pre­sent­ing the good deeds of a bad per­son, how­ev­er insignif­i­cant they may be. Yet, the film isn’t always as beau­ti­ful­ly tact­ful. There’s a punk­ish dis­dain for north­ern Eng­land, its cit­i­zens are pre­sent­ed as troglodyt­ic né’er-do-wells, bare­ly a soul with­out some kind of unsight­ly facial dis­fig­ure­ment, while the land­scapes are lit­tered with grot­ty night­clubs, road-side fast-food shacks with poor­ly-paint­ed signs and sil­ly names, rinky-dink hair salons and pokey, uninvit­ing pubs. Pover­ty is aes­theti­cised, with an iron­ic focus on what peo­ple look like in the con­text of an amus­ing­ly archa­ic back­drop. There’s no nobil­i­ty in the work­ing class. And this is some­thing you could over­look were the film not so packed full of cos­met­ic garishness.

Hav­ing to make a deci­sion over whether the film does or doesn’t bran­dish a cer­tain insen­si­tiv­i­ty towards its sub­jects (human and geo­graph­ic) is pos­si­bly its great­est down­fall. But the ques­tion needs to be addressed because this is clear­ly a seri­ous, qual­i­ty text and there’s so much else to admire. Wolfe’s top-trump here is new­com­er Sameena Jabeen Ahmed, who plays Laila, the char­ac­ter to whom the title refers. She’s a bejew­elled inno­cent who has become vic­tim to harsh famil­ial cir­cum­stance, the par­tic­u­lars of which Wolfe and his co-writer sib­ling Matthew keep very vague. Ahmed makes for a scin­til­lat­ing screen pres­ence, her nat­u­ral­ly puffed-up eye­lids lend­ing a drug­gy dis­con­nect to her des­per­ate situation.

She also imbues the film a feel­ing of bit­ter melan­choly, as there’s the sense that even though she and her Scot­tish boyfriend Aaron (Con­nor McCar­ron) are in poten­tial­ly mor­tal dan­ger, that this fleet­ing stretch of auton­o­my is excit­ing enough to tem­porar­i­ly muf­fle the unspo­ken sins of the past. The fact that her con­cept of escape involves her bare­ly leav­ing North York­shire is itself points to a quaint unworld­li­ness, that despite the trau­mas she has suf­fered, it’s a place she likes and doesn’t want to leave.

The Wolfe broth­ers prove them­selves to be expert monolo­gists, with the film’s duel high-points involv­ing char­ac­ters mere­ly recit­ing mem­o­ries or dreams to their respec­tive accom­plices. The dia­logue always feels nat­ur­al and unforced, and even though the con­tent some­times drips with thick por­tent, it’s nev­er enough to dull the plea­sure of just hear­ing these actors speak­ing these words. Plot­ting is more of an issue, and a remark­ably tense open­ing few reels — which fol­lows two sep­a­rate time­lines head­ing on a messy col­li­sion course — is dulled by some reg­u­la­tion plot twist­ing, dou­ble-cross­ing, nar­row escap­ing, etc.

Some have writ­ten about Catch Me Dad­dy as an overt­ly polit­i­cal movie, one which address­es the notion of ​“hon­our killings” in the British Pak­istani com­mu­ni­ty. It’s been com­pared to John Ford’s The Searchers, but it feels more akin to the gru­elling likes of Elem Klimov’s World War Two clas­sic, Come and See. The infer­ence is that the film is essen­tial­ly a plea for reli­gious tol­er­ance and under­stand­ing, espe­cial­ly regard­ing the treat­ment of young women. While this notion sits in the back­ground like a rogue foot­ball stick­er, it nev­er feels like Wolfe is forc­ing a state­ment, that every­thing wraps up neat­ly into a head­line-friend­ly lib­er­al screed. The clever obfus­ca­tion of fact and con­text is, in the end, what makes the film worth catching.