Goodbye Charlie Bright (Wide Screen) > Reviews > First Love

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Good
Special Effects	Good
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	Nice movie, good cast, great storytelling (but with little story)
Disadvantages:	A few loose ends

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

For several years now British director Nick Love has been at the forefront of the British movie industry The Football Factory, Outlaw, The Business all shining examples of his work. But Nick Love's first feature for me is his most shining example of movie making brilliance, while my life in London was a little less violent; to me Love delivers the most accurate portrayal of like as a teenager growing up in London.

If you live in England, you might remember the long and very hot summer of 2001, the term heatwave was everywhere you went. I think it was possibly the last good British summer, and Love's movie accurately emphasises the heat of that period. He shows the many street parties, and the brilliant neon colours everyone seemed to wear almost wishing the summer to last forever. A year that everyone was tanned, and dripping with sweat, even late into the evening.

Charlie (Paul Nicholls) is the leader of a group of friends whom have all grown up together, as they reach adulthood the childhood things of their past have all expired, sleeping with girls, snorting cocaine, and committing burglaries are the order of the day; yet into this dark territory there is some innocence that remains. The purity of love, and unrequited love; and the need that despite your poor upbringing you might still be able to become something, indicated by the varying status of the adults that surround Charlie and his gang. But this summer is the one that Charlie and his friends will remember as the one that changed their life.

It's strange to find movies that actually have little story but remain interesting; Goodbye Charlie Bright is a prime example of this. For 60 of the movies 80 minutes it literally plods along with this little gang doing fairly mundane things, but still remaining strangely intriguing to the viewer. A lot of the characters and their relationships are never really explained, almost as if this was one of series of movies. I guess you could say the movie is like a grubby soap opera with future storylines all panned out, the fact that a lot of relationships go nowhere do not have a negative effect on the movie, in fact it's almost like its allowing you to fill in the gaps yourself.

For a first feature Nick Love had a fairly heavy support of named actors, fresh from soap Eastenders was Paul Nichols, while veterans like Phil Daniels (Quadrophenia, Eastenders), Dani Behr (The Saturday Show, The Word), Richard Driscoll (Eastenders), Jamie Foreman (Gangster Number One), David Thewlis (Naked, Harry Potter) and Nicola Stapleton (Eastenders, Bad Girls); you might note the heavy emphasis of Eastenders stars, all of whom with the exception of Daniels had finished their run with the show prior to the start of filming. Even with this factor taken into account this for the time was a fairly hefty star involvement. Add to this the then little known Danny Dyer, who seems to be a persistent thorn in my side because while I loathe this dreadful actor he seems to be in a lot of movies I really enjoy. Luckily Dyer here is actually his most tolerable, this was before the days that his ego became six times higher than his already sizable head.

It's interesting how purity and harshness seem to go hand in hand with this movie, Charlie is smitten by the unobtainable anonymously named Blondie (Behr) and this is the real innocent sort of love interest that has a long list of plus points with issues of sex being right at the bottom of the ladder. While Eddie (Daniels) is a violent and racist thug, who gets his kicks by sleeping with the girlfriends of others and being generally unpleasant in the process. Then you have Charlie's friend Justin (Roland Manookian) nicknamed "The Wife" who is so dependent on his friendship with Charlie that anything else in life is a secondary issue, Justin however being the most mentally insecure of all the movies characters flying off the handle at the least issue, and to top this off there is a strange relationship between him and Tony (Foreman) that swings balance like between borderline homosexuality and a father son relationship.

Despite the grubby looking council estates that indicate the movies location as being the less desirable areas of South London, there is something kind of enviable about this lifestyle. The fact that despite local hostilities everyone seems to know each other, and to some degree look after each other. Even stunts like pelting old ladies from the top of a block of flats, have strangely small town connotations, "I know your mother" she shouts; but this is no small town community, a densely populated community where several hundred individual occupants may dominate one block of flats (apartments). But it's that community feel of open parties, and childish pranks that make the movie most enchanting; even if the movies final moments transpire to be something incredibly dark.

Goodbye Charlie Bright is one of those movies that is easily enjoyed on repeat viewings, each time I have seen it I have identified different interpretations of certain acts and relationships. The movie is quick witted, expeditous in its storytelling, yet strangely dark while remaining enchantingly endearing.

I have the original feature free DVD, which has nothing other than the movie and the trailer. However there is also feature rich edition available that retails at £7.99.

Spencer Hawken 03/08