So I’ve just left England behind for a while. I’ve left behind the rancid divisions, the pub Brexit knees-up, the clown prince PM, the xenophobia, the sense of a country shrinking into a shrinking shell. I’ve arrived back in Latin America and the first thing I do, pretty much, is go and see a film about England. In truth, I went to see it because my friend Dhiraj, who is not normally one to wax lyrical, told me it was a great film. And he’s kind of right. Ray & Liz, Billingham’s quasi autobiographical piece, is a nicely-structured tale, moving between three timelines, each one competing to be the most depressing. Richard Billingham is about my age and although I didn’t grow up in the kind of poverty he describes, I remember the sense of a society that was introspective, pickled in its own ignorance, revolving around the joys of booze and the paucity of anything else. The director captures this world with a surgical eye, as befits the fine photographer he is. There is some affection in the portrayal of the world of Midlands family which is supported by the state, notably in Tony Way’s ebullient but cursed Lol, but any affection is trumped by the harshness of this world. It’s not a land for children, but somehow or other the two brothers have to find a way of growing up with as little psychological harm as possible. Clearly, the fact that the director has reached the point where he can Terrence Davies his past means he’s done OK. Ray & Liz feels like a companion piece to Hogg’s The Souvenir, its dirtier, snottier little cousin. The two films should be compulsory viewing for the new “British curriculums” that the fresh prince government is likely to be pushing any day now.
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