If there is one director who can call himself a worthy successor to Ken Loach’s style of social cinema, it is Clio Barnard. Since addressing the story of playwright Andrea Dunbar in the documentary ‘The Arbor’, the director has always focused on the margins, with protagonists bordering on exclusion, as shown in ‘The Selfish Giant’, or with stories of traumatized relatives in a rural setting, as it did with ‘Dark River’. On this occasion, the director shows her kinder face with ‘Ali and Ava’, a film nominated for two BAFTA Awards and this could be seen in the Official Section of the 18th Seville European Film Festival.
Unlike his previous feature films, which dealt head-on with the drama about stories of abuse, neglect and how the system is unable to address certain social problems, ‘Ali and Ava’ is a classic love story that touches the conventional sticks of the genre, narrating a love that must overcome barriers. However, the setting is far from typical of romantic stories, as well as the age of the protagonists, since then the film tells how a middle-aged kindergarten teacher falls in lovedivorced, mother of two children and former grandmother, and a former DJ, also middle-agedwho makes a living by renting apartments and who is of Pakistani origin.
She, of Irish and Catholic origin, and he is a Muslim, two completely antagonistic figures who are two lonely souls who meet. The film exploits the conventions of romantic stories to portray two lives within a realistic frame, as love is experienced by all people of different social backgrounds. Precisely, that romantic style brings Ken Loach’s proposal closer to cinema, being a sort of autumn response to the wonderful ‘Just a kiss’which told the love story of a young Catholic high school teacher and the older brother of one of her students, a 20-year-old who dreams of becoming a DJ.
The romantic touch in social cinema
Although there are similarities Barnard, who also signs the script, adds complexity and experience that comes with age. In these two wounded souls there is, on the one hand, a powerful affirmation of feminine autonomy, of a woman who managed to raise her children by overcoming being a victim of sexist violence. His character is one of the most complex and is portrayed in a sublime way by Claire Rushbrook. In reverse, there is that of a man consumed by a broken relationship and from which he has not finished dissociating and which, in fact, escapes with his greatest passion, music and which is wonderfully defended by Adeel Akhtar.
These personal backpacks give more complexity to a love story that also shows that getting carried away by feelings or indulging in a relationship means something else when the experiences have been lived like those narrated and which, in fact, give the film that social touch typical of the proposals of Loach or Mike Leigh. A film whose main message is to enjoy your life, to let yourself go, inside a realistic and far from cliché picture, with authentic characters, with which true stories (and bodies) are claimed.
Barnard signs his most accessible feature film, which does not mean that it is one of the roundest in his filmography. The director knows how to maintain social contact in an upbeat environment, where music becomes an accomplice to games in a delightful storyone of those who enjoy the authenticity it releases and the dedication of its protagonists, a formidable tandem that offers a face much closer to what is concrete and true love.
Note: 8
The best: The chemistry of Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rushbrook.
Worse: Some moments it lacks conventional, even taking into account its social realism.
Source: E Cartelera
