Director: Terence Davies
Running Time: 100 mins
Certificate: 15
Release Date: Available on DVD
Terence Davies recently returned to the director’s chair after an 11 year gap with The Deep Blue Sea, but he started out behind the camera with this trilogy of short films made in the late 70s and early 80s. Together the three short films make an intriguing piece, with each film having its own style but following the same central character at different stages of his life, from childhood to death, with a heavy interest in the nature of memory.
The trilogy kicks off with ‘Children’, about a young adolescent boy called Robert Tucker. The film show us vignettes of his life as an outsider at his school, as well as his burgeoning sense that he may be gay. At home his father is presented as a strange and rather terrifying presence, with Robert having conflicting feelings about his death. ‘Madonna and Child’ sees Robert as a middle-aged man, still living his mother (who he’s devoted to) and working in a dead end job. [Read more…]