Last Resort
***
Cinema
Releases - April 20, 2001
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate PG. 132
minutes. Written and directed by Brian Helgeland. Starring Heath Ledger,
Rufus Sewell, Shannyn Sossamon, Paul Bettany, Laura Fraser, Mark
Addy.
Although the heroine of "Last Resort"
is a bogus asylum seeker, the movie itself plays like mockery of the Tory
theory that Britain is overrun with fraudsters trying to bypass the proper
immigration process. The woman and her son find themselves unable to escape
their "designated holding area", a council estate patrolled by guards and
security cameras, with barbed wire around the fences, just to reinforce the
concentration camp milieu. "This is the armpit of the world," the boy tells
his mother, and after a few weeks they're begging to revoke their asylum
application and go back to Russia.
The single mother is Tanya (Dina Korzun). She
comes to Britain to meet up with her fiancé. He's a no-show at the
airport and isn't answering his phone; Tanya holds out hope that it's a mix-up,
but Artiom (Artiom Strelnikov) instantly knows that the guy has gotten cold
feet and bailed out. In a panic, not knowing what to say to immigration officers,
Tanya files a claim for political asylum to buy her some time and find out
what's going on. She's volunteering herself to a stay in hell.
The small Brighton town Tanya and Artiom find
themselves in is miserable and static. Pre-teen thieves do the rounds of
the flats at night and market their finds on Sundays. The weather is grim.
There is nothing to do unless you're a fan of British bingo halls, and if
you are then you've lost the will to live. A local scumbag approaches Tanya
in a chip shop asking her to pose for a live porn show on the internet; Artiom,
smart kid that he is, asks "You realise he's a pimp, don't
you?"
The only real comfort the mother and son find
is in a nice local businessman named Alfie (Paddy Considine), who has romantic
interest in Tanya, but doesn't push it, and is mostly concerned with looking
after this nice woman and her kid, helping them along with humour and
consideration, being there for them when they need a helping
hand.
A description of "Last Resort" may make it sound
like an unrealistically hellish picture of life within the cogs of the British
immigration system. Actually, the film's aura is pretty down-to-earth; it's
just that dwelling on its details for eighty minutes lets us feel the characters'
misery and pick up on the harrowing undertones of the atmosphere. This is
a short, touching, quietly disturbing little picture.
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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