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Peter Mullan hits the right notes in crowd-pleaser Sunshine on Leith |
Director: Dexter Fletcher
Cast: George MacKay (Davy Henshaw), Kevin Guthrie (Ally),
Freya Mavor (Liz Henshaw), Antonia Thomas (Yvonne), Jane Horrocks (Jean
Henshaw), Peter Mullan (Rab Henshaw), Jason Flemyng (Harry Harper), Sara
Vickers (Eilidh)
Sunshine on Leith
is a jukebox musical that really works, because its story feels natural, its
characters are engaging and the songs don’t feel too shoehorned in (even if, of
course, we have a character called Jean to allow Oh Jean to be sung, and another moving to Florida which will of
course require a Letter from America).
It’s a really good reminder of how many really toe-tappingly, hummable, great
songs The Proclaimers came up with. It’s not a masterpiece of course – but as a
piece of solid, competent, crowd-pleasing cinema it’s hard to beat.
The plot follows two soldiers returning from Afghanistan.
Davy (George MacKay) is keen to start a new life, Ally (Kevin Guthrie) wants to
marry Davy’s nurse sister Liz (Freya Mavor). Davy founds himself drawn to Liz’s
colleague Yvonne (Antonia Thomas), while Liz struggles to reconcile her love
for Ally with her desire to spread her wings and see more of the world.
Meanwhile Davy and Liz’s father Rab (Peter Mullan) discovers, on the eve of his
25th wedding anniversary to Jean (Jane Horrocks), that a brief
affair in his early marriage led to the birth of a daughter (Sara Vickers) he never
knew he had. Love and family problems play out to a string of Proclaimers hits.
Sweeping camera-work from Dexter Fletcher helps to create a
romantic, vibrant image of Edinburgh – you’ll want to book your tickets as soon
as the film ends, this is such a good advert for the city – and he draws some
wonderful performances from the cast, all of whom I suspect had the time of
their lives making this film. How lovely is it to see Peter Mullan moving away
from gruff hardmen, to play a man as sensitive and humane as Rab – and also to
hear him croon with feeling some top songs? He makes a superb partnership with
Jane Horrocks, who not surprisingly is the most accomplished singer, and who
channels her natural bubbly mumsiness into a genuinely moving portrayal of a
wife dealing with completely unexpected betrayal.
The film keeps the humanity of its characters very much at
the centre, never over-complicating the plot or overloading us with extraneous
detail or drama. The quietly tense opening sequence of Davy and Ally on tour in
Afghanistan (with a rendition of Sky
Takes the Soul) swiftly helps us invest in their safety – and sets us up to
really feel their release once they return to the safety of civilian life.
Nothing hugely unexpected happens in the film at all – it can be pretty
accurately predicted from the start – but the whole thing is told with genuine
warmth and feeling.
There are some stand-out musical sequences. Over and Done With, told as a pub
story-telling session, works really well – it’s wonderful up-beat, vibrant
sequence. Jason Flemyng has a great dance cameo during a fun-filled number set
in the Scottish National Gallery (Should
Have Been Loved). Davy and Ally dance thrillingly down the street to I’m On My Way as they celebrate their
discharge. The final number – it’s not a surprise – sees what seems like most
of Edinburgh corralled into a massive rendition of a song about walking a very
long distance…
George MacKay demonstrates he’s a pretty decent song and
dance man – and he also has the every-day ordinariness that makes him a perfect
audience surrogate. His chemistry with Antonia Thomas is also fantastic. As the
secondary couple, Freya Mavor is headturningly watchable as Liz, while Kevin
Guthrie gives a nice air of bemused immaturity to Ally.
Sunshine on Leith
is a brilliant crowd-pleaser, and has clearly been made with love and affection
for the material and the songs, which seeps off the screen. It’s a perfect
advert for everything in it. I would say that I am not sure Fletcher is the
perfect film director – he’s afraid to let the camera stand still for too long
in the larger dance set-pieces, which means we lose the impact of some of these
numbers (or the chance to really appreciate the choreography). But he totally
gets the tone of the film, and delivers that in spades.
It’s much pretty guaranteed that you’ll laugh, you’ll cry,
you’ll fall in love. And you’ll want to watch it over again.
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