McGregor smolders in dark role
There is no one named Adam in the moody character study Young Adam, an atmospheric, '50s-era film starring Ewan McGregor as Joe, an angry young man and an enormously lusty one, too. (The film, which carries a MPAA rating of NC-17, has as much - if not more - sex than Last Tango in Paris.) As adapted by writer-director David Mackenzie from the book by Scottish beat poet and novelist Alexander Trocchi, the film is about Joe, a metaphorical Adam (as in the first man), and his expulsion from paradise. Joe's Eden is a river barge, the Atlantic Eve, hauling coal down the Clyde and the canals around Glasgow. Those familiar with the delightful 1934 film L'Atalante, about newlyweds on a barge with an old salt, may see an echo in Joe's serving as first mate to a husband and wife, Les and Ella (Peter Mullan and Tilda Swinton) here.
There is no one named Adam in the moody character study Young Adam, an atmospheric, '50s-era film starring Ewan McGregor as Joe, an angry young man and an enormously lusty one, too. (The film, which carries a MPAA rating of NC-17, has as much - if not more - sex than Last Tango in Paris.) As adapted by writer-director David Mackenzie from the book by Scottish beat poet and novelist Alexander Trocchi, the film is about Joe, a metaphorical Adam (as in the first man), and his expulsion from paradise.
Joe's Eden is a river barge, the Atlantic Eve, hauling coal down the Clyde and the canals around Glasgow. Those familiar with the delightful 1934 film L'Atalante, about newlyweds on a barge with an old salt, may see an echo in Joe's serving as first mate to a husband and wife, Les and Ella (Peter Mullan and Tilda Swinton) here.
There's trouble in paradise. In the film's opening scene, we see the corpse of a lingerie-clad woman float from river bottom to surface, where she's fished out by Les and Joe and handed over to the police. Les is transfixed by the seminude beauty, prompting Ella to observe that he can't keep his eyes off a woman, even a dead one. Joe seems uninterested, though he is unusually tender when he pulls down her petticoat to cover her exposed buttocks.
Told in interlocking flashbacks and flashforwards, Young Adam slowly reveals that Joe knew the dead woman, whose name is Cathie and is played by the hauntingly lovely Emily Mortimer. And as we come to see Joe in different contexts, he begins to look less like the biblical Adam than the snake in the garden.
The ever-mesmerizing McGregor delivers the most complex performance of his career. The more we know about Joe, the less we know. Except for his magnetic sexuality, which draws Ella and other women to him like iron filings, he is impenetrable, a man whose alienation from feelings other than his sexual urges is almost total. (At times, I felt as though I was in the grip of a story that combined the plotlines of Dreiser's An American Tragedy with Camus' The Stranger.)
I've never read Trocchi, the Scot Jack Kerouac, so I don't know if Mackenzie's adaptation of his novel is faithful or fanciful. But I really admired how Mackenzie told Joe's story in a way that made me rethink my feelings toward him in every sequence. Is he a bohemian? An artist? A commitment-phobe?
I also appreciated how Mackenzie, working with cinematographer Giles Nuttgens, visually indicates that Joe is a piece of human driftwood, floating from place to place and never finding mooring.
Also quite fine is the film's musical score from David Byrne, as unsettling and edgy as the story.
Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey
at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.
Young Adam
*** (out of four stars)
Produced by Jeremy Thomas, written and directed by David Mackenzie, from the novel by Alexander Trocchi, photography by Giles Nuttgens, music by David Byrne, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics.
Running time: 1 hour, 42 mins.
Joe Taylor. . . Ewan McGregor
Ella Gault. . . Tilda Swinton
Les Gault. . . Peter Mullan
Cathie Dimly. . . Emily Mortimer
Gwen. . . Therese Bradley
Parent's guide: NC-17 (nudity, explicit sex, profanity, sexual violence)
Playing at: Ritz Five and Ritz Sixteen/NJ