As product placements go, it's a doozy: measuring 394 metres long, 2.81 meters wide, attaining top speeds of 207.9mph at 148 feet below sea level. That's right - the shadowy star of Shane Meadows' featurette is a Eurostar train.
Surprisingly, Somers Town was originally conceived as a 12-minute plug to mark the train service's move to St Pancras International station in 2007. "We didn't want an advert," Eurostar's marketing director told 'Variety'. "We were after something cultural." Long-time Meadows collaborator Paul Fraser penned a script, and Meadows started shooting - and shooting, until he eventually presented his bankrollers with a near-feature length film.
Naturally, Meadows' decision to share a sleeper carriage with The Man has proved somewhat controversial, especially among certain frothing film critics looking to make names for themselves. Frankly, if product placements give them such coronaries, for the sake of their own health may they never be allowed anywhere near Sex And The City: The Movie. While heaven forbid they should ever find out that Mike Leigh, Ken Loach - and yes, Shane Meadows - have all made McDonald's ads in the past.
Compared with taking the clown's shilling, the Eurostar hook-up seems more like patronage (in the old-fashioned sense of the word) than branding; Meadows insists they were very hands off - even given a slightly cringey scene in which one character waxes lyrical about those wonderful trains that go under the sea. Most movies are rarely wholly 'independent' anyway, so the ethical issue arising here is in charging cinema prices to view something calling itself a feature film. Well, fine: call it a commercial then. It's a ten-star commercial. And it's bloomin' lovely.
Like most Meadows' pictures this is another grittily poetic coming-of-age tale, set in a depressed location, featuring juvenile bonding and absent or surrogate parent figures. Teen urchin Tomo (Turgoose) flees his Nottingham care home and winds up in Somers Town, the grim, gang-ridden area between Euston and St Pancras. There he meets dreamy introvert Marek (Jagiello), whose separated builder dad Mariusz (Czop), is helping to build the Eurostar terminal. The new friends attempt to win the heart of Maria (Lasowski), a French café waitress whom they both fancy, before she goes back to Paris.
Meanwhile, the homeless (and following a laundry accident, clothes-less) Tomo hides out in Marek's bedroom, gets drunk and is discovered by Mariusz, before being taken in by wheeler-dealer neighbour Graham (Benson, marvellous). At the end, Tomo and Marek visit Maria in Paris (via Eurostar of course), the monochromatic feature finally bursting, Wizard Of Oz-style, into colour.
Narrative-wise it's not exactly There Will Be Blood, but to call Somers Town a stop-gap for Meadows is to insult another beautifully crafted film, as well as a great London film, from the finest British director working today. Somers Town, the kind of movie critics refer to as a "gem", is as charming, funny and authentic as any of his major works; the fact it achieves this in just over an hour and with a corporate backer tousling its hair makes the victory even sweeter.
The ensemble cast is terrific, and share a fantastically real camaraderie (see especially the tender scenes between Jagiello and Czop as the shored-up father and son, missing the wife and mother who walked out on them back home). But as the bruised, Artful Dodger-like Tomo, Turgoose is standout, once again proving why he's Meadows' best acting find since Paddy Considine, whether turning on the chimpy charm ("I'm actually a painter myself," he tells Maria. "I do bottles, wine glasses, flowers... women, sometimes"), or showing off his natural comic chops; even during a scene in which he's discovered sitting naked on the edge of a bathtub with photos of Maria in his hand, furiously doing with the other what comes naturally to 16-year-olds. Had this been executed by Larry Clark from a screenplay by Harmony Korine, you'd know what to expect. This being a Shane Meadows film, however, it's just another uproarious, naturalistic scene from teenage life.
Likewise, a scene in which Graham the fence tells Tomo that in order to bunk down at his he'll have to do everything he tells him to. "What, in a sexual way?" enquires Tomo. "No, not in a sexual way," scoffs an exasperated Graham. Despite Graham's kinky novelty apron, or habit of keeping fivers down the front of his posing pouch, there are no genuine monsters in Somers Town. As the young squires ferry Maria home in a customised wheelchair, that sudden flicker of unease on her face abates just as quickly; they mean her no harm.
That's not to say there isn't darkness here. Tomo gets a kicking from the local lads, Marek and his father's situation isn't the best, obviously - and it's even debatable whether the boys' climactic Eurostar journey ever actually happens outside of their own heads, such is the air of fantasy about it. (There is clearly something of the surrogate mother about Maria, for both boys. While her very name, evoking the Virgin, further underpins the near-religiosity of the ending. Incidentally, the name of the ad agency which commissioned the film is 'Mother'.)
Yet always there is hope, a breezy optimism undercutting the melancholy. Tomo's transparent self-loathing ("It don't matter who I am... a useless waste of space") may be heartbreaking, but it only makes his salvation - through friendship, through platonic love - all the more joyous. As Meadows' mate Gavin Clarke, whose folksy, bittersweet songs perfectly compliment the visuals, sings, "There's a vein of pure gold in the stone".
Surprisingly, Somers Town was originally conceived as a 12-minute plug to mark the train service's move to St Pancras International station in 2007. "We didn't want an advert," Eurostar's marketing director told 'Variety'. "We were after something cultural." Long-time Meadows collaborator Paul Fraser penned a script, and Meadows started shooting - and shooting, until he eventually presented his bankrollers with a near-feature length film.
Naturally, Meadows' decision to share a sleeper carriage with The Man has proved somewhat controversial, especially among certain frothing film critics looking to make names for themselves. Frankly, if product placements give them such coronaries, for the sake of their own health may they never be allowed anywhere near Sex And The City: The Movie. While heaven forbid they should ever find out that Mike Leigh, Ken Loach - and yes, Shane Meadows - have all made McDonald's ads in the past.
Compared with taking the clown's shilling, the Eurostar hook-up seems more like patronage (in the old-fashioned sense of the word) than branding; Meadows insists they were very hands off - even given a slightly cringey scene in which one character waxes lyrical about those wonderful trains that go under the sea. Most movies are rarely wholly 'independent' anyway, so the ethical issue arising here is in charging cinema prices to view something calling itself a feature film. Well, fine: call it a commercial then. It's a ten-star commercial. And it's bloomin' lovely.
Like most Meadows' pictures this is another grittily poetic coming-of-age tale, set in a depressed location, featuring juvenile bonding and absent or surrogate parent figures. Teen urchin Tomo (Turgoose) flees his Nottingham care home and winds up in Somers Town, the grim, gang-ridden area between Euston and St Pancras. There he meets dreamy introvert Marek (Jagiello), whose separated builder dad Mariusz (Czop), is helping to build the Eurostar terminal. The new friends attempt to win the heart of Maria (Lasowski), a French café waitress whom they both fancy, before she goes back to Paris.
Meanwhile, the homeless (and following a laundry accident, clothes-less) Tomo hides out in Marek's bedroom, gets drunk and is discovered by Mariusz, before being taken in by wheeler-dealer neighbour Graham (Benson, marvellous). At the end, Tomo and Marek visit Maria in Paris (via Eurostar of course), the monochromatic feature finally bursting, Wizard Of Oz-style, into colour.
Narrative-wise it's not exactly There Will Be Blood, but to call Somers Town a stop-gap for Meadows is to insult another beautifully crafted film, as well as a great London film, from the finest British director working today. Somers Town, the kind of movie critics refer to as a "gem", is as charming, funny and authentic as any of his major works; the fact it achieves this in just over an hour and with a corporate backer tousling its hair makes the victory even sweeter.
The ensemble cast is terrific, and share a fantastically real camaraderie (see especially the tender scenes between Jagiello and Czop as the shored-up father and son, missing the wife and mother who walked out on them back home). But as the bruised, Artful Dodger-like Tomo, Turgoose is standout, once again proving why he's Meadows' best acting find since Paddy Considine, whether turning on the chimpy charm ("I'm actually a painter myself," he tells Maria. "I do bottles, wine glasses, flowers... women, sometimes"), or showing off his natural comic chops; even during a scene in which he's discovered sitting naked on the edge of a bathtub with photos of Maria in his hand, furiously doing with the other what comes naturally to 16-year-olds. Had this been executed by Larry Clark from a screenplay by Harmony Korine, you'd know what to expect. This being a Shane Meadows film, however, it's just another uproarious, naturalistic scene from teenage life.
Likewise, a scene in which Graham the fence tells Tomo that in order to bunk down at his he'll have to do everything he tells him to. "What, in a sexual way?" enquires Tomo. "No, not in a sexual way," scoffs an exasperated Graham. Despite Graham's kinky novelty apron, or habit of keeping fivers down the front of his posing pouch, there are no genuine monsters in Somers Town. As the young squires ferry Maria home in a customised wheelchair, that sudden flicker of unease on her face abates just as quickly; they mean her no harm.
That's not to say there isn't darkness here. Tomo gets a kicking from the local lads, Marek and his father's situation isn't the best, obviously - and it's even debatable whether the boys' climactic Eurostar journey ever actually happens outside of their own heads, such is the air of fantasy about it. (There is clearly something of the surrogate mother about Maria, for both boys. While her very name, evoking the Virgin, further underpins the near-religiosity of the ending. Incidentally, the name of the ad agency which commissioned the film is 'Mother'.)
Yet always there is hope, a breezy optimism undercutting the melancholy. Tomo's transparent self-loathing ("It don't matter who I am... a useless waste of space") may be heartbreaking, but it only makes his salvation - through friendship, through platonic love - all the more joyous. As Meadows' mate Gavin Clarke, whose folksy, bittersweet songs perfectly compliment the visuals, sings, "There's a vein of pure gold in the stone".