Films > Film Reviews

The Goob

29/05/15

It’s rare that we, the Outline film team get invited to an actual movie premiere. These days it’s mostly a blank faced disc through the post, or a press showing full of jaded, jeering journalists (although those are quite fun), but hardly ever do we get to ‘hob-nob’ with the stars of the latest cinematic offering. Imagine our joy then, when we were invited by the kind folks at Cinema City to attend their preview showing of The Goob, alongside stars Liam Walpole, Sean Harris and director Guy Myhill. It’s even rarer that these events grace our fine city, so why here and why now? Well, they’ve only gone and made a film set in Norfolk. And it’s good. Very good.

Now, it’s true to say that there aren’t many Norfolk based movies. Whilst this may seem logical in some ways; I mean it has neither the sprawling metropolis of London, nor the geographical majesty of the Scottish highlands, stuff still happens here. Small stuff, but y’know, stuff. And that’s where this film lives. Not just in Norfolk, but in the small stuff. Don’t be fooled into equating small with insignificant however, it’s the small things that matter most. Like this film.

The plot centres on a 16 year old boy called Goob (Liam Walpole) who, upon finishing school, enters the real world with no clothes, prospects or true identity. Forced to exist in the microcosmic world of his emotionally abused mother’s roadside café, he clashes with her vicious, womanising boyfriend Gene Womack (Sean Harris). Goob responds to friendship from charismatic outsider Elliott and migrant farm worker Eva, which provides relief from the ever present Womack, who spends his time, when he’s not shagging anything he can get his muddy hands on, being the biggest fish in a shitty pond of sugar beet and low end racing. However, just as Goob starts to learn that there’s more to life, these connections are taken from him one by one, until he has no one left to help him but himself.

Harris’ stock car racing bully-boy is both contemptible and menacing in equal measure, whilst first-timer Walpole’s nuanced, understated, almost silent portrayal of Goob is sympathetic, innocent and drives the film. Subtle, sometimes tense and often funny, Guy Myhill has made his debut movie an incredibly effective piece of social realist cinema that is beautifully shot, and uses the desolate, sprawling East Anglian vista well to simultaneously give the impression of freedom whilst effectively trapping the characters in their own bleak tableau. The events of the movie, which feel initially directionless, perfectly mirror the film’s central protagonist, until he is forced firmly but quietly into adulthood. As the action complicates, it slowly and surely builds towards its inevitably confrontational conclusion.

Satisfying, stylish and well balanced; Myhill’s first offering is some damn fine local produce, and I for one am eager to see what comes next.