Adapted from his own prose-poem, Richard Jobson's 16 Years Of Alcohol is a heartfelt account of a young man in Edinburgh (Kevin McKidd), struggling to turn his back on the violence and the drinking which have defined his turbulent life. Split into three distinct sections - childhood, adolescence, and adulthood - and with the central character providing a melancholic narration, the film is much closer in style and spirit to Wong Kar Wai than Ken Loach.
In the very first scene of Jobson's directorial debut, Frankie Mac (McKidd) is chased by his former mates, cornered in an alleyway, and kicked unconscious. Via an extended flashback - the dream perhaps of a dying man - we then journey back through key moments from his past.
We see how as a child his idealised love for his heavy-drinking father (Lewis Macleod) was shattered by discovering the latter's unfaithfulness. There's the excitement that the teenage gang leader Frankie - whose bedroom wall posters include A Clockwork Orange and Bruce Lee - experiences when meting out violence. The relationship with an assured art student Helen (Laura Fraser), with whom he falls deeply in love. And the attempts at AA meetings and in acting classes to try to make sense of his self-destructive behaviour, aided by the guardian angel figure of Mary (Susan Lynch).
"INTENSE AND IMAGINATIVELY MOUNTED"
Heavily stylised in terms of its use of colour, framing, camera movements, and still photographs, 16 Years Of Alcohol shows how youth subcultures, through clothing and music, furnish our adolescent selves with a sense of identify: one of the pleasures here is seeing Frankie try on and inhabit new looks and styles. And Jobson's choice of music from the 70s, such as Bryan Ferry's Love Is The Drug and Iggy Pop's Raw Power, powerfully articulates his character's feelings. There are flaws in the storytelling - an over-reliance on the voiceover, some occasionally awkward pacing - but this is still an intense and imaginatively mounted first feature.
16 Years Of Alcohol is released in UK cinemas on Friday 30th July 2004.
16 Years Of Alcohol (2004)
