Page 28 - Community Living Magazine 30-3

FIlm reVIew
FIlm tHAt BreAkS The care home is a miserably
inappropriate place for the grieving
new grounD Luke, alien to everything he has ever
experienced in his life. As a ‘resident’
he cannot enter the kitchen, he cannot
Simon Jarrett praises a keenly observed flm seen entirely go out unaccompanied and nobody
from the point of view of its main character seems to know or care about who he
is, other than that he is a man with a
learning disability who has now
my Feral Heart treatment of learning disability in become that dreadful anonymous
Director: Jane Gull a number of ways. The flm is seen object, a service-user. As is often the
Writer: Duncan Paveling entirely from the point of view of Luke, case, he is seen for who he is not by
played by Stephen Brandon who won any qualifed ‘professional’, but by
young man with Down’s Best Actor (beating Eddie Redmayne two outsiders – Eve (Shana Swash),
A syndrome looks after his ailing, and Michael Schumacher) for his fne a lowly care assistant who senses
elderly mother. The two of them live performance. Other characters feed off his grief, and Pete (Will Rastall),
alone. He is calm, competent and kind. him and are sometimes infuenced by a posh but troubled young man, doing
He cooks, cleans, shops and helps her him but they are not the story – he is, community service in the care
to wash and dress. He plays her throughout. Luke is a three dimensional home grounds.
favourite music and even manages to character, who has the full range of
get her to dance a few steps with him. human emotions. This should not be magic realism
Their world is very small and very a surprise but unfortunately, given the Pete simply bonds with Luke human to
isolated, but he is in control and history of flm treatment of this subject, human, troubled outsider to troubled
manages it well. The inevitable it is. Finally, we are asked to believe outsider. There is a bold (if not entirely
happens, and his mother dies in in him and go with him, even when successful) element of magic realism,
her sleep. he is doing things that appear to us when Luke rescues an injured,
unexplained and strange. And because mute wild child (Pixie Le Knot) whom
Sadly, what follows is equally of this flm’s sincerity and authenticity, he fnds lying in a feld, and removes
inevitable: social workers, coupled with the strength of Stephen her to a barn where he cares for her.
much tut-tutting over his vulnerability, Brandon’s performance, we do.
total statutory blindness to his abilities It is a pity that this flm did not win
and his personal history, and the sad general release. However, it has built a
enforced car journey away from luke is a following and a reputation through the
everything he knows, to a care home three dimensional ‘our screen’ initiative where cinemas
utterly strange to him. character, who has will show a flm if enough people sign
the full range of up to watch it. It has attracted
This is the premise of Jane Gull’s human emotions. screenings across the country in this
excellent and keenly observed flm, way, a sign of its strength and the
which breaks new ground in cinematic originality of what it has to say.

Continued from Page 25 – now there’s me thinking Krypton is 2016), if you are a learning disabled
t
to carry the narrative in a particular something you fnd in Superman person on television, you shouldn’t
direction. He just turns up to work and comics. Rula and Peter made it through have to be an ‘issue’. You can be there
then goes home – just like, well, to the head-to-head round but just because you’re also there in the world
just like a butcher’s assistant. missed out on the fnal. The next night we all live in, the one that isn’t
they appeared again but were knocked on the television. This isn’t tokenism,
Flying start out in round one. Rula suggested as some argue.
n equally quiet event unfolded Jimmy Carter as a former Prime Minister
A over two episodes of Pointless, of Great Britain – mind you, she could As the journalist Helen Lewis put it in
the late-afternoon quiz show in which have done worse, the postgraduate The Sunday Times recently, “I know that
the aim is to secure as few points as student in the other team proposed for some people ‘diversity’ conjures
possible, by coming up with answers Howard Wilkinson (the former up an image of a politburo of political
that no one else has thought of. manager of Leeds United). correctness demanding that no one
Rula from Bedfordshire appeared as watches The Dam Busters because there
a contestant alongside family friend Why mention these two television are no lesbians in it… asking for
Peter, a maths teacher. Rula introduced moments? The whole point about them diversity is only asking writers and
herself as a writer currently was that two people with learning directors to think a little harder, to tell
working on a crime thriller and an disabilities simply appeared as stories that are a little less obvious.”
autobiography. She also has Down’s themselves, just part of the mix of
syndrome, (although she didn’t people we all see every day of our lives. These were two small stories, one
mention that). She got off to a fying fctional, one real, where someone had
start, responding to the challenge As the Channel 4 head of diversity thought a little bit harder, and where
‘name a chemical element with two explained in the pages of this uneventfulness suddenly became very
syllables’ with the answer ‘Krypton’ magazine last year (Vol. 29, No. 4, exciting indeed. Simon Jarrett

26 Vol 30 No 3 | Spring 2017 Community Living www.cl-initiatives.co.uk