MY NAME IS JOE (1998 Romance Drama, Rated MA for language)
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Joe gave up the booze after bashing a girlfriend in an abusive fit and has been burdened with remorse ever since.
As the jobless coach of an ever-losing local soccer team, Joe (Cannes Best Actor winner Peter Mullan) has been unlucky in life, labour and sport and is lost in a swirl of self-doubt when a sensitive social-worker cautiously offers love.
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Sarah (Louise Goodall) is soothed by Joe's soft manner and warm heart but circumstance seems destined to keep them apart when Joe tries to help a young footballer and his drug-addicted wife, who owe money to a drug-dealer who would sooner break the boy's legs than lose face due to an unpaid debt.
Ken Loach's piercing tragi-comedy is a rare film, without artifice or excess, about people who find love after they've given up trying and who then must make gut-churning choices.
Trapped in their low-rent tenements, the funny, sad, lovable and pathetic characters paint a vivid panorama of working-class hopes and dreams, with valleys of tenderness, peaks of laughter, eruptions of violence and a babbling stream of obscenities.
Without subtitles, the dialogue is somewhat blurred by the thick Glasgow brogue.
It does require a good ear because you won't want to miss one truthful word.
* * * * * Free on You Tube; Rotten Tomatoes Critical approval 88%.
Also recommended:
* * * * The Black Book (1949, Robert Cummings).
This ever-surprising historical thriller is free on You Tube.
Keith Lofthouse
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