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	Young Adam
	David Mackenzie Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Peter Mullan, Emily Mortimer, Jack McElhone, Therese Bradley, Ewan Stewart, Stuart McQuarrie, Pauline Turner 2003		Set in a gloomy Scotland of the 1950s, "Young Adam" is a weird, not altogether successful attempt to create a hybrid of British kitchen-sink drama, murder mystery and courtroom thriller. There are moments of true potency, but it can be a slog as a shifting time line and vague motivations create more confusion than insight. The cast is gifted and gutsy. Ewan McGregor, whose breadth is visible in fare ranging from "Trainspotting" to the "Star Wars" movies to "Down With Love," plays Joe, an amoral drifter serving as the film's hollow center. Tilda Swinton ("The Deep End"), Peter Mullan and Emily Mortimer play pivotal roles opposite McGregor. Swinton is the bedraggled yet undaunted Ella, who owns a barge where she lives with her husband Les (Mullan) and their son. Ella and Les pilot the vessel on the canals between Glasgow and Edinburgh, ferrying goods between the cities. They hire Joe (McGregor) to help out on board, only to have him secretly exert his seductive wiles on Ella. Early in the film, Joe and Les find the dead body of a young woman floating near the barge. That discovery puts "Young Adam" on a before-and-after course of sullen glances, heartlessness, quiet despair and sexual betrayal. Too often meandering at a sleepy pace, "Young Adam" provides only one true jolt, in the perverse mistreatment of a disrobed Mortimer as Joe's young lover.


	Wednesday, December 18, 2024





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