Richard Ayoade’s is a name that carries with it a certain prestige. As one of those folk whose touch has been all over the UK’s comic output of the last decade (see Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, The Mighty Boosh, Nathan Barley, Time Trumpet, Snuff Box and, of course, The IT Crowd), his is a pedigree matched by few others currently active in the British comedy scene. So, it’s fair to say that news of an Ayoade directed film brings with it a reasonable degree of anticipation, if not expectation. The man hasn’t made too many missteps of late.
What, then, can we say about Submarine, Ayoade’s feature film debut? A coming-of-age comedy-drama amalgam, the film revolves around 15 year-old Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), a precocious, curious and awkward teenager living in Swansea who mistakes his intellectual ambitions for schoolyard respect. Didn’t we all. Infatuated with the similarly strange yet infinitely more popular Jordana (Yasmin Paige), the two embark upon a trembling relationship, by turns uncomfortable and effervescent. However, with his parent’s marriage on the verge of collapse and Jordana’s own mother stricken with a brain tumour, Oliver starts to retreat into himself with disastrous, etc., etc.
So, at first glance it’s another in an increasingly long line of socially-maladroit-but-endearingly-quirky-teenagers-fall-in-love-and-then-learn-that-the-world-can-be-a-difficult-place stories. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that set up, but after the generalised Zach Braff-ing of the genre I have begun to grow wary of the cinematic assumption that just because these characters have good music taste and a weird obsession with macramé dinosaurs I should necessarily feel some degree of empathy for them.
Which is where Submarine begins to stand up for itself. Not a single macramé dinosaur in sight. Perhaps it’s the source material we can thank. Based on Joe Dunthorne’s 2008 novel of the same name, there’s a depth and unexpectedness to the narrative and characterisation so often lacking in coming-of-age films these days. Rarely overwrought, the affect rises from the minutiae and in that way tends to mirror the closeted existence of our youth. These two feel like they belong squarely to their own world, not that of the adults that surround them.
Perhaps too, Ayoade can claim some responsibility. The Swansea he conjures is grim but occasionally beautiful, always coloured with the tinge of teenage disaffection, yet riven with moments of tentative exhilaration. These are not the clean, sunlit lines of a Hollywood landscape, and they feel like a far more precise cipher of teenage anomie because of it. Also, the film is definitely funny. Despite lending a necessarily serious eye to proceedings, Ayoade remains an assured comic director, even if the gentle humanism of much of this film is a way removed from the more absurd fare he’s known for.
And perhaps it’s the work of the leads, Oliver and Jordana, both of whom channel quite perfectly the false bravado, overstated character traits and broad anxieties of our teen years. No whipcrack retorts and zinging one liners here, just the generally well intentioned and awkward bumbling that afflicted our adolescence. Both were immensely endearing, in their frustrating ways, although I’m willing to admit that perhaps it’s because I could see so much of myself in Oliver’s myriad social and sexual uncertainties that I warmed so much to the film. Exaggerated perhaps, but, man, I felt that kid’s pain.
At its base, though, Submarine is quite simply a thoroughly enjoyable film. Serious without becoming stultified, and funny without drifting into parody. There are certainly quibbles one can make: even at 97 minutes, its monochrome aesthetic can make the whole thing feel a little drawn out and if you object to the film’s more whimsical stylistic flairs – self-aware narration abounds – you’re probably going to have a tough time of it. But, despite all that, Submarine remains a film of tremendous heart and understanding, and one that works the contours of the teenage condition – that first flare of love, the shuttering of idealism, its cautious hopes and abyssal depressions – as well as any in recent memory. A worthy endeavour.
- Four stars