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British actor and documentary filmmaker Kevin Allen is making his feature film
directorial debut with Twin Town, a free-wheeling black comedy that inevitably
invites comparison with last year's Trainspotting. It's actually a somewhat
inaccurate comparison, predicated upon the simple fact that Twin Town
executive producers Danny Boyle and Andrew MacDonald were director and
producer, respectively, of the earlier film. Sure, Twin Town features plenty
of anarchic, urban dysfunction, cynicism and drugs. But it's also far more
plot-oriented, and more to the point, it departs from Trainspotting's
unrelentingly hard-edge tone with other, brighter colors (literally and
figuratively). With its farcical touches, Twin Town actually admits a trace
of Monty Python, Absolutely Fabulous and Joe Orton.
We're in Swansea, South West Wales, immortalized by the poet Dylan Thomas with the three words "ugly lovely town" (which a character here has further updated as "pretty, shitty city"). Fatty Lewis (Huw Ceredig), a local handyman, has fallen off a ladder at work, while under the employ of Bryn Cartwright (William Thomas), wealthy roofing contractor and local kingpin. When Cartwright refuses to pay any workman's comp, Fatty's two disaffected, punkish sons (Rhys Ifans and Llyr Evans) -- they're known as the Twins, even though they are not actually twins -- devise a revenge of on-going harassment tactics which are outrageous, even scatological, but still, basically benign. Complications quickly arise, however. The two local policemen, Terry (Dougray Scott) and Greyo (Dorien Thomas), who are assigned to keep an eye on the Twins are also involved in local drug traffic, as is Cartwright himself. And when these complications lead to the inadvertent murder of the Twin's entire family, the Twins' plan of on-going harassment escalates from outrageous-but-benign to out-and-out murderous. |
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The tone of the film is funny (sometimes a bit too broad for its own good, in
the form of secondary characters who are a little too caricatured), decidedly
black and anarchic (a very popular flavor these days, it seems). But what
gives Twin Town its particular frisson -- and this is its primary point of
commonality with Trainspotting -- is its refusal to pass moral judgment on the
Twins. Their behavior may be utterly criminal not to mention totally immoral,
but they are undeniably the most engaging characters up on screen. And not
having the director telegraph how the audience should feel about them is
always a refreshing change which brings with it an agreeably spine-tingling
sensation.
Although Twin Town features first-rate acting from everyone, it is clearly the performances of Messrs. Ifans and Evans which furnish the film with its magnetic core. What with their alternately vacant and super-charged expressions, together with their perfectly timed comic interplay, these real-life brothers have a way of synthesizing such disparate qualities as gallows humor, immorality and nihilism which is exhilarating. It's exhilarating because underneath all the nihilism, they also manage to convey -- surprisingly but crucially -- not just a will to survive but a quirky joie de vivre which is infectious and ultimately optimistic. This totally contradictory but utterly believable mix of qualities is the perfect distillation of Twin Town's quintessentially modernist vision. If nothing else, see it for the Twins. |
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