How We Used to Live *****
Dir: Paul Kelly.
With the voice of Ian McShane. 70 mins. Cert: NC. Opens June 10
This is becoming a
cherishable trend: choice selections from the National Film Archive, dusted off
and given renewed vigour through being presented in collaboration with the
musically minded. Here, Paul Kelly (Lawrence of Belgravia) assembles a collage-history of London from uncertain post-War
solidarity to the coming of the yuppie. Where Julien Temple’s London: The Modern Babylon scrapbooked
with typical punk energy, Kelly cultivates a woozy-hazy feel that befits the
soundtracking Saint Etienne: he slows down to observe life at street level
before filling our heads with escapist notions (nights on the town, a glimpse
of Tarby in Jack and the Beanstalk).
Again, we’re nudged into playing that pleasurable but also socially useful game
of spotting what’s gone and what remains the same, yet any editorial is
ventured with a tremendous lightness of touch: the final movement, in
particular, is as lovely as anything Kelly and his band of dreamers have ever signed
their names to.
How We Used to Live opens in selected cinemas from Tuesday.
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