This Years Love

Starring: Clune, Dougray Scott Director: David Kane Original UK Premiere: 1999 Dvd Release: 21st February, 2000 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: Anamorphic, PAL, Region 2 Encoding

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DVD Extras: Short on-set interviews with the principals & a promotional featurette are supplemented by a sequence of unedited behind-the-scenes footage. The film itself is presented in a good-looking anamorphic print.

An unpretentious Brit-flick distinguished by a great cast, This Years Love is writer-director David Kanes wry, funny study of six singletons in search of something, possibly love, possibly just sex, that will help them make sense of an untidy world. Aside from the acting, the films strongest feature is its unflinching realism. The setting is North Londons Camden Lock, an area that is in equal parts ultra-trendy & horrendously squalid. The characters reflect the locale: a circle of youthful drop-outs, wannabes & never-have-beens united in their common desire to surmount loneliness & find that elusive perfect match. The central figures are newlyweds Danny & Hannah & the film in essence concerns itself with the fallout from the spectacular & rapid disintegration of their marriage. Danny first hooks up with cleaner-cum-nightclub singer Mary , while Hannah finds lecherous womaniser Cameron . Camerons flatmate Liam fails to impress posh single mum Sophie , who goes on to reject Danny & Cameron in turn, while Liam becomes dangerously obsessed by Hannah then Mary. So the merry-go-round of relationship swapping, unlikely coincidences & bittersweet life-lessons turns full circle.

David Kanes comic dialogue is witheringly sharp, the situations are well-observed & the characters sympathetically three-dimensional . The frequently hilarious comedy is tempered by an underlying despair: if its not exactly Brassed Off or The Full Monty for neurotic, self-obsessed metropolitans, its a film thats at least happy to exist in the same genre & achieves the same poignant empathy with its characters. The soundtrack is great, too. Imagine that the cast of Trainspotting gate-crashed Four Weddings & a Funeral & the result would be This Years Love.

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