Ray & Liz

Death-trap gas heaters, ceram­ic har­le­quins, moul­der­ing jig­saw puz­zles and a milk crate full of cut-price spir­its. These are the cher­ished memen­tos that fil­ter through the wilt­ing mem­o­ry of bed­sit derelict Ray (Patrick Romer), as he flops about his room, sus­tained by three pop bot­tles of max strength home brew which are left on his dress­er, dai­ly, by a beard­ed visitor.

His drunk­en rever­ies trans­port us back to the crum­bling Birm­ing­ham abode of a more youth­ful Ray (Justin Salinger) and his tat­tooed, chain-smok­ing spouse, Liz (Ella Smith), a sloven­ly two­some of dis­arm­ing inert­ness who are some­how allowed to have numer­ous chil­dren run­ning around their ankles. Liz sits with her needle­work and a fag dan­gling from her bot­tom lip, while the lit­tle ones roll around on the fetid car­pet and play with their sun dam­aged toys.

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Richard Billing­ham restages scenes from his for­ma­tive years and brings to life the pho­tographs of anar­chic domes­tic dis­cord and des­o­la­tion that won him the plau­dits of the art­world cognoscen­ti in the mid-’90s. He does so with triple mea­sures of brac­ing hon­esty and lac­er­at­ing ten­der­ness, all chased with a teacup shot of trea­cle black humour.

The first act focus­es on Richard’s roly-poly uncle Lol (Tony Way), whose yap­ping Brum­mie drawl is both hilar­i­ous and the obvi­ous sig­ni­fi­er of an unac­knowl­edged psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­der. For the prize of a reheat­ed pork din­ner, he must tend to the chil­dren while Ray and Liz head to the shops for new shoes. He must promise to not get sloshed while on guard, but temp­ta­tion gets the bet­ter of him. While this open­ing plays as a rib­ald anec­dote (replete with hor­ri­fy­ing punch­line), the remain­der of the film mean­ders a lit­tle more, the tone less wack­i­ly satir­ic and more doleful.

The years roll by, we see Richard’s younger broth­er Jason as a pre-teen tear­away, though his home life remains almost iden­ti­cal to how it was. He sus­tains him­self with pick­led red cab­bage between white sliced bread, and his abject bore­dom leads to var­i­ous brush­es with death. Ray and Liz, mean­while, have become com­fort­able in their dai­ly tor­por, and care lit­tle that their off­spring roam free and unsu­per­vised. Jason escapes to the zoo and to a neighbour’s bon­fire. He is a holy inno­cent who is numbed to the intense parental neglect.

The affec­tion with which Billing­ham has recre­at­ed his child­hood home, strewn with art­less­ly decay­ing tat, leav­ens the all-per­va­sive sense of bleak­ness. Yet this is no lat­ter-day broad­side aimed at his malev­o­lent folks, more a wide-eyed remem­brance of spi­ralling, trag­ic lives and shoe-string sur­vival. It’s a film of tics, details and immac­u­late­ly ren­dered tableaux, mim­ic­k­ing the sprawl­ing ran­dom­ness of real­i­ty in many respects, but also cap­tur­ing the squalid poet­ry of their drea­ry environs.

Even though it’s tough to like any of the char­ac­ters, it’s also tough to dis­like them, as the film nei­ther pan­ders for sym­pa­thy nor chides their list­less ways. It bemoans nei­ther the pol­i­tics of the era nor blames the sys­tem which pins these peo­ple to the bot­tom of the bar­rel. It’s about the vivid­ness of mem­o­ry and how these lives have shaped Billingham’s own. It’s a very spe­cial film, per­haps the nest to come out of the UK in many years.