Showing as part of Glasgow Film Festival @ GFT, 18th-19th February
Richard Ayoade’s (Moss form IT Crowd…) directorial debut is reassuringly and unsurprisingly nerdy, it showcases a genuinely original and cinematic imagination. Set in a very beautiful but damp-looking coastal area of Wales in an indeterminate pre-internet, pre-mobile phone era, it tells the story of teenage misfit Oliver (Craig Roberts). His main obsessions are losing his virginity, avoiding getting picked on at school, and preventing his terribly middle-class, politely bickering parents from splitting up.
So far, so typical of a coming-of-age narrative, but what makes this film such a pleasure is its genuinely witty script and quirky, distinctive audiovisual style. While the period might appear deliberately vague, the general setting of the film is quite firmly Nerdy Teenage Boy World where girls are inscrutable and manipulative, school is a barely comprehensible social minefield, but a world ultimately shaped by Oliver’s controlling voice-over peppered with his wry and arch observations. The dryly funny and occasionally bittersweet tone brings to mind Wes Anderson films, especially Rushmore, but ultimately Submarine reveals a strong emotional intelligence belied by the solipsism of the central character, with the disintegrating relationship between Oliver’s parents hilariously but very credibly played out. Oh, and its got Paddy Considine with a mullet. A great date movie for geekier couples.