Poster hero

Deborah Ross

Wednesday, 10th June 2009

Looking for Eric
15, Nationwide

Looking for Eric is Ken Loach’s latest film, and while one worships Ken Loach generally and his early work in particular — Cathy Come Home; Family Life; Kes; all of which will still blow your socks off today — I’m just not at all sure about this. I mean, it’s fine, and it’s good-natured enough, and it has its moments but it just seems disappointingly unoriginal; a sort of cross between The Full Monty and Play It Again, Sam leading to a finale that is so sentimental it goes beyond mawkish and may even be the full mawk. Listen, I can do the full mawk. I can take it. Didn’t I cry at the end of Marley & Me and didn’t I cry buckets? I suppose that, in this instance, I just expected something more truthful.

So, here’s the deal. Eric Bishop (Steve Evets, whose name you may or may not wish to try backwards — I’ve just noticed) is a middle-aged Mancunian postman on the brink of nervous collapse. His second wife has left him to bring up his two criminally inclined teenage step-sons. He is still in love with his first wife, Lily, but does not think she’ll ever forgive him for walking out on her and their baby daughter years ago (I know I wouldn’t!). He drives the wrong way around roundabouts. His cupboards are stuffed with undelivered post. His postie mates try to cheer him up but fail. So he takes refuge in dope, and one evening, in his bedroom, while he is talking to the poster of his all-time hero, Eric Cantona, who should step out but the great footballer-philosopher himself. Cantona is a sublime presence as well as excellent comic value and, although patently a figment of Eric’s imagination, there is no attempt at trickery in his scenes. He simply appears in Eric’s bedroom, or beside him in the pub, offering tips like some kind of lifestyle coach. ‘He who follows a trawler might be in with the chance of a sardine,’ he might say. OK, maybe not. But he does say things like: ‘He who is afraid to throw the dice will never throw a six.’ A bit silly, really, as what if you were to throw a one? But Eric laps it up and is, yes, put back on the road to happiness.

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