Brakes

The idea for actor Mer­cedes Grower’s direc­to­r­i­al debut Brakes is an endear­ing, inge­nious one: tell the tales of Lon­don romances gone wrong, but first you see the break-up, then the ini­tial meet­ing. Then, gath­er a cast of tal­ent­ed com­ic and dra­mat­ic actors to bring all these sor­ry folk to life through impro­vi­sa­tion. This sec­ond step clear­ly went well, with Julian Bar­ratt, Noël Field­ing and Julia Davis head­ing up the packed ros­ter of game actors. If any­thing, it went a lit­tle too well. There are nine cou­ples to break and hook up on screen in 90 minutes.

The film aims to cap­ture a cross-sec­tion of Lon­don life, but is a sub­ject from every bor­ough real­ly nec­es­sary? The key prob­lem with this num­ber of mini nar­ra­tives is that break-ups don’t car­ry the ele­ment of sur­prise, espe­cial­ly after you’ve seen the first few. By the end, the cou­ple aren’t togeth­er and they are upset. Yet there are indi­vid­ual tri­umphs: Davis is heart­break­ing and hilar­i­ous as a fail­ing actor des­per­ate for suc­cess and affec­tion, while Field­ing and Grower’s blow up in an under­ground toi­let is melan­choly humour done well.

Yet half the film’s run­time is ded­i­cat­ed to this very spe­cif­ic roman­tic dynam­ic with­out actu­al­ly ever com­ment­ing on its rel­e­vance or impor­tance. The sec­ond half is mer­ci­ful­ly more var­ied as we learn the ori­gins of all the heart­break, and the improv act­ing is giv­en more room to shine. A pub­lic swim­ming pool meet-cute becomes as glar­ing as a float­ing ver­ru­ca in the hands of bril­liant com­ic actors Kel­ly Camp­bell and Steve Oram. It’s a shame it all the good stuff arrives far too late.

Brakes seems a lit­tle like it was con­ceived in a morn­ing and filmed that same after­noon. It wouldn’t be sur­pris­ing to dis­cov­er if in some scenes, the moti­va­tion was lit­tle more than a cur­so­ry note, leav­ing remark­able actors like Ker­ry Fox floun­der­ing for inspi­ra­tion. There’s so much going on in such a short run time that it’s hard to make a com­mit­ment to any­one or anything.