Rent Summer Scars (2007)

Well-written and acted, Highly-enjoyable, Intelligent Wales-set 'Kids Movie for Adults'. - Summer Scars review by PV

I had low expectations of this, especially when the graffiti credits started the film to a rap soundtrack! However, the script is so obviously well-written by an excellent writer (Al Wilson) and the main character's development and lines so believable, that I was won over. The performances of all the teenagers, some playing their age and some playing down, are also authentic and spot-on.

The extras here are worth watching esp the half hour film on THE MAKING OF - the director Julian Richards is interviewed as are all cast - Including Kevin Howarth who plays the mysterious and erratic 'disheveled drifter' the kids encounter in the woods. His Sheffield/South Yorkshire accent as the character is bang-on despite it not being his own. That accent makes the stranger even more strange. What precisely is he doing in some woods in Wales? On the run? Escaped? Just homeless?

I was surprised this script started as a film screenplay and not as a theatre play - though I suspect the writer comes from that background. The moody mercurial disturbed person who can switch from nice to nasty and back again in the blink of an eye is rather a staple of drama in theatres.

But no matter, the dialogue is spot-on and there is NO flab at all on this film! Which is always nice to see,. Why its running time is just over an hour.

There is real menace here in the main character, and humour aplenty too, and the teenager characters are believable. No doubt these days, a disabled kid would have to play the disabled kid character - yet more absurd 'authentic casting'. I do so wish they'd all try acting. This is NOT progress. I dread to think what this would look like if the box-ticking BBC made it as a drama now (and BAFTA has its race/gender diversity quotas now too...)

As ever, Darren Evans - here 17 playing down in age - excels as an actor (see him as Baz the junkie in A StreetCat Named Bob and many a Welsh-made film).

This is a true British film and I liked the twist ending (no spoilers). No state funding that I can see (lottery and BFI funded films do not tend to be was watchable and entertaining as this).

It's nice to get really contemporary technology into films - though one wonders how playwrights and screenwriters of a former age would have coped with the existence of mobile phones or smart phones, where everyone can inform everyone else of everything instantly! A teeny-weeny plot hole may exist in this film because of that, but not so much as to spoil it.

4 stars. Recommended.