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This is the latest feature from the "Amber Collective", a group of film makers who since 1969 have been writing, producing, and directing socially aware films as a team, using non-professional actors to play characters similar to themselves.
Here, we follow Joe (Armstrong), a cabaret singer, brass-band conductor, composer, and special-needs teacher from an ex-mining town in the north-east of England, working every available hour to support his family. He’s played by someone called Joe, a cabaret singer, brass-band conductor, composer and special-needs, etc, you get the idea.
Joe has troubled relationships with his bullied ten-year-old son Michael (Dent) and his seventy-year-old father Arthur (Kelly), an ex-miner who’s determined to stop developers evicting him from the beachside pigeon-loft he’s enjoyed for fifty years. But even more troubled is Joe’s relationship with his wife Carol (Gascoigne - Paul’s sister!), who kicks him out because he’s never there for his family.
People might draw parallels with "Billy Elliot", but apart from the fact that this family is also called Elliot, Joe aside, they have none of the charm that makes us root for them.
The film depicts how external problems heap further pressure on already tense relationships. It also shows that it is 'grim up north', that communities must stick together and it’s not nice to lie to people. So what’s new?
The Amber Collective have an interesting approach to film making, but what matters is what ends up on the screen, and all we see is a cheap-looking, naturalistic portrayal of an East Durham family without hope for the future. As a fiction, it’s nothing new in style or substance - just the kind of thing British film has been doing for years. If it’s meant to be a study of reality, they should’ve made a documentary.
"Like Father" is released at the on Friday 15th June 2001.
