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Family Life followed Poor Cow and Kes in the trilogy that formed the first part of ‘Kenneth’ Loach’s cinema career. A pale and lovely Sandy Ratcliffe is a shop girl whose schizophrenia is seemingly induced by her upright, but insensitive parents. There aren’t many laughs in David Mercer’s script (already filmed by Loach as a ‘Wednesday Play’ in 1967), but there is plenty of anger. The shock of RD Laing’s 1960s ideas about the terrible effects of ‘family life’ seem to come from long ago, but the emotions in the film still strike home with full force. The casting of Ratcliffe and, as her parents, Bill Dean and Grace Cave, is inspired. Loach’s direction together with the camerawork and editing produce a masterpiece of realist filmmaking. Commentators have acclaimed the documentary ‘feel’ of the film, but as Loach says: “There are obviously little tricks of the trade to try and make it look as though it is happening for the first time, but it’s set up like a fiction”. Today’s aspiring filmmakers can still learn from Loach.

 

Roy Stafford on 13th June 2007
View all 12 of Roy Stafford's reviews