This depressingly grim and sadly true story of the life of troubled Brit playwright Andrea Dunbar which had very little joy, has been made into a powerfully mesmerizing movie by artist and film maker Clio Bernard who has merged documentary with performances that makes it such a compelling view. Ms Dunbar, one of nine children, grew up in The Arbor, a rough Housing Estate (Projects) in Bradford, a working class city in the north of England, and at the ripe age of 15 had written a Play about her own life as a pregnant teenager living with an abusive drunk father. Thanks to an alert teacher it ended up with Max Stafford-Clark’s, the Artistic Director London’s famed cutting edge Theatre, The Royal Court. In 1980 he produced the play which was such a critical hit that it ended up also being performed in New York, and it got Andrea a commission to write her second piece. Called ‘Rita Sue and Bob Too’, it exposed her life further by focusing on two teenagers both having an affair with the same married man. … another smash, which was also filmed.
Her life off the stage continued at a scary manic but joyless pace as she had three children by three different fathers, and unhappy with her lot resorted to heavy drinking, and then physically weakened by her alcoholism died of a brain hemorrhage alone in a Pub at the age of 29.
The filmmaker interviewed all the children (now in their 20’s) and many of the friends and relatives in Dunbar’s life, and then had actors lip sync their words. A stunningly effective concept, which heightened the intensity of all the pain of her life, and the very real tragic way that Lorraine, the oldest one daughter, replicated it. Lorraine, neglected by both parents and suffered domestic violence and racism as a young adult also took refuge in alcohol before becoming a very heavy crack cocaine and heroine user, which in turn led to her totally spirally out of control and actually harming one of her own chidden : a pivotal point in the story which will stun you into total disbelief.
Ms Bernard interspersed the performances of the interviews with live re-enactments of Dunbar’s plays actually in the open air right on the green space in the middle of The Arbor surrounded by onlookers who one presumes are the current tenants of the Estate. It was an inspired touch.
One very noticeably point is that the two daughters take centre stage in this film, albeit always separately, and they both have mutually sympathetic yet drastically different accounts of their upbringing. I guess when you own a past that is so unrelentingly ghastly and without even a mere glimmer of hope, you remember what you want, or cannot avoid.
That fact that even whilst Ms Dunbar could articulate her predicament she never seem to possessed the smallest aspirations to change her destiny, and that seems to be the fate that her children have inherited. Some way through this gripping piece I had qualms at being such a voyeur especially as it was easy to tell that that there would not be a happy ending, but I blame Ms Bernard for the fact I that sat riveted right though to the end of this continuing tragedy as I simply was hooked by her innovative and her ingenuous creative approach to filmmaking. This is Realism as Real as it gets.
P.S. I was tipped off about this movie by one of the Film’s Producers I sat next at a Sundance Screening, and I am so pleased that I found it here in the UK on DVD, if you live elsewhere demand your local Art-house put it on, EVERY cineaste should see this one.
★★★★★★★★★
Click For Trailer
Posted by queerguru at 19:46
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