Submarine (2010) ***

Personally, I’ve always been really rather fond of duffle coats. The big ones, with the tiger tooth buttons that should be so much easier to button up than they in fact are. In my child hood my duffle coat was like a protective force field in the winter. Doing up the buttons was turning keys in a lock to close out the cold. Duffle’s are great, in a Paddington kind of way. And it’s for this reason they are not exactly an under used prop in the cinematic frame, albeit one I could certainly see more of.

Our protagonist in Submarine is of course duffled up. And he wears it with all that pent-up angst and quirkiness that wearing such a coat requires when you are, let’s be honest, well beyond the age for duffle wearing. Particularly where the duffle is accessorized up with a very slim briefcase. The kind of ensemble that going to get you smacked one in the playground.

I couldn’t really work out what this film had about coats – his girlfriend has a red lesser model, also worn regularly throughout the film. Maybe it was some sort of metaphor for the world around them that they need to be wrapped up almost all of the time – as some sort of protection against the human elements. Or maybe it was just winter, and they weren’t getting enough heat from burning everything.

To me this was a story of a boy coming of age while trying to micro manage the world around him and yet time and time again finding it unmanageable. It’s about working hard for the small victories and rolling with life’s knocks whilst remaining artistic throughout. Perhaps it should have been about recognising that carrying a briefcase at school will always make you a marked man (even if you have a cool duffle coat to protect you).

This film falls firmly into the alternative/indie genre. It’s shot like a VW advert but with just a bit more grey. In fact it feels like a mix of genres all cobbled together to make an almost endearing whole with a strong narrative lying over the whole thing. A kind of Welsh diary narrative.

It’s hard not to like Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts). It’s also hard not to want to shake him at times for thinking so simply. His parents like him are dysfunctional which makes it all the better to bring into this cauldron a neighbour from healing hell (Graham Purvis played in an understated way by Paddy Considine) to mix things up further.

It’s a weird mix but it does work. I’m not sure what else I can really say. Other than to remind the kids to stay away from the matches…