Trea­cle Jr

Like a warm summer’s day in the arse-end of town, Jamie Thraves’ self-financed third fea­ture is the genial, eco­nom­i­cal sto­ry of an unlike­ly but touch­ing friend­ship between a dis­il­lu­sioned mid­dle-class man and a cheer­ful chancer.

It begins when, with­out appar­ent warn­ing or expla­na­tion, gen­tle giant Tom (Tom Fish­er) walks out on his fam­i­ly and seem­ing­ly com­fort­able mid­dle-class exis­tence. He trav­els to Lon­don and, after an alter­ca­tion with a tree, encoun­ters – and unin­ten­tion­al­ly befriends – Aidan (Aidan Gillen) in the emer­gency room.

Man­ag­ing to be spec­tac­u­lar­ly irri­tat­ing, dis­arm­ing­ly friend­ly and high­ly com­i­cal, Aiden is an odd-job man liv­ing hand-to-mouth who, to Tom’s ini­tial cha­grin, takes to fol­low­ing him around like a loy­al but noisy hound.

The film’s dal­liances with bru­tal­i­ty and real­ism are trou­bling reminders of just how delud­ed and vul­ner­a­ble Aidan is. For instance, he’s involved with an attrac­tive woman – Lin­da (Riann Steele) – his girl­friend in name only, who beats him and unashamed­ly uses him for cash. A mark of her degen­er­a­cy is that she is first glimpsed by Tom hav­ing sex with a men­ac­ing char­ac­ter in a graveyard.

Trea­cle Jr. is abun­dant­ly charm­ing but, like Aidan, a touch too sim­ple. Lin­da, for exam­ple, is lit­tle more than a vil­lain­ous har­ri­dan and although Tom’s ambi­gu­i­ty is nice­ly essayed by Fish­er, this lack of psy­cho­log­i­cal illu­mi­na­tion can on occa­sion frus­trate. In its down-and-out outsider’s view of Lon­don it recalls Mike Leigh’s mod­ern mas­ter­piece Naked, which unfor­tu­nate­ly makes it look rather insub­stan­tial by comparison.

Nev­er­the­less, it ben­e­fits from a mar­vel­lous momen­tum, pow­ered by its rov­ing, flu­id cam­er­a­work and deli­cious­ly fit­ting sound­track, and the cen­tral per­for­mances are a joy.

While Fish­er is lik­ably hang-dog, Aidan Gillen (in a wel­come depar­ture from play­ing hubris­tic scum­bags) is unex­pect­ed­ly hilar­i­ous as an effer­ves­cent motor-mouth pos­sessed with unshak­able opti­mism. In this he resem­bles The Fast Show’s enthu­si­as­tic Man­cun­ian teenag­er who finds every­thing ​‘bril­liant!’ – and togeth­er Tom and Aidan make for a pleas­ing­ly mis­matched duo.

Enter­tain­ing but a touch slight, one thing that’s in no doubt is that Trea­cle Jnr’s heart is in the right place; it is, after all, a film named after a kitten.