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Two lads, alienated in London

Adolescent boys, both new to London, living in the shadow of London's St. Pancras station. Shane Meadows' Somers Town is an affectionate, episodic and very quick (71 minutes!) sketch of this transitional neighborhood in Kings Cross, within spitting distance of the Eurostar train that travels the "chunnel" to Paris.

Two young boys from London form a strong bond doing odd jobs for an eccentric neighbor and competeing for the affection of a beautiful French waitress in "Somers Town."
Two young boys from London form a strong bond doing odd jobs for an eccentric neighbor and competeing for the affection of a beautiful French waitress in "Somers Town."Read more
    by By Carrie Rickey, Inquirer Movie Critic | Columnist
    Published 

Adolescent boys, both new to London, living in the shadow of London's St. Pancras station. Shane Meadows' Somers Town is an affectionate, episodic and very quick (71 minutes!) sketch of this transitional neighborhood in Kings Cross, within spitting distance of the Eurostar train that travels the "chunnel" to Paris.

Meadows is the Nottingham-born director of Once Upon a Time in the Midlands and This Is England, films that embrace those who live on the tattered fringes of the social carpet.

In Somers Town, shot in black-and-white evocative of French New Wave films, Marek (Piotr Jagiello), a Polish teenage emigre who lives with his dad, Mariusz (Ireneusz Czop), encounters Tomo (Thomas Turgoose, veteran of This Is England), fresh off the train from Nottingham.

Tomo has run away from home and wants a taste of the big city. Mariusz has run away from a bad marriage and brought Marek with him. The two lads with the porridge-thick accents meet in a coffee shop where Tomo spies photographs that Marek has taken of a pretty woman named Maria.

Not a lot happens in the film, which grew out of Eurostar's commissioning a film from Meadows that would feature the chunnel train. However thin, the story of these rootless youths, estranged from mothers and native cities, has a certain universality and appeal.

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