In many ways, Shane Meadows’ Somers Town, his unassuming and innocuous follow-up to last year's critical smash This is England, pulls off what his much-touted last project couldn't. With Somers Town, the stakes are considerably lower as Meadows relates the ephemeral bond between Tomo (England’s star, Thomas Turgoose) and Marek (Piotr Jagiello) instead of attempting to encapsulate a personal view of a now historic moment in Thatcherite Brittania. It has no insights to offer save for the notion that the traditional family model is a failure and the best solution is undoubtedly the one you make for yourself but that’s alright because for the most part, it’s sweet, funny and relatively quiet. Meadows has given himself a much needed break and it’s a very satisfying one at that.
Both This is England and Somers Town circle around the paradox that is “community.” Polish immigrants, Marek and his father keep to themselves, bonding only with Marek’s macho Pole buddies who are a little too boisterous for the shy Marek. Tomo, a gutsy 16-year-old huckster from the Midlands, gets himself beat up because, well, he too is the typical Meadows’ outsider. They make quite the pair, ogling Maria the local waitress (Elisa Lasowski), finding new ways to get cash for nothing and always killing time. Eventually, because they’re teenagers, everything leads back to sex, making for some of the most satisfying bits of adolescent dead air dialogue since Superbad.
While regular Meadows’ screenwriter Paul Fraser’s script isn’t nearly as bombastic as the constant dick and pussy jokes of any of the Apatow cabal’s ever-expanding oeuvre, it relates a hopeful but non-existent ménage a trois between the two wannabes and their French dreamboat that is as close to a stable world unto itself as it gets. Rounded out by Graham (the highly underrated Perry Bronson), Marek’s happy-go-lucky loser of a neighbor, the ersatz family is held together by nothing more than their fear of being without each other, unwilling to define themselves by anything more than their refusal of loneliness.
In true Meadows’ fashion, Marek the foreigner is the one to embrace the snotty little kid from the Midlands, whose only defense is his dreamy hedonism and listless denial. The outsiders brings the alienated insider into the fold, but whether or not it’s a friendship of necessity or of convenience is unclear. Tomo claims to be an orphan but that’s probably just talk. He’s not like This is England’s Shaun, who’s trying to pick up with the local skinheads where his absent father left off. There’s no national identity involved here either, making Meadows’ clumsy and protracted montage sequences infinitely more tolerable this time around because they’re not trying to carry the burden of the nation on their shoulders.
Tomo’s notion of what a girlfriend is differs from Marek’s, leading him to comically throw up his hands in disgust at Marek’s presentation of the Polish courting custom of not kissing their girlfriends. “Well, you’re not in Poland anymore. This is England,” Tomo says matter-of-factly but a national identity based around sexual or familial frustration just won’t do. Right afterwards, Marek’s dad’s drinking buddies egg the bashful artiste on about how he wanks off, sending him to his room in a hurry. Tomo and Marek are just teens and Maria is just a girl that makes them feel good, not a national island unto themselves. Meadows’ constant use of black-and-white suggests a more severe overtone to the story but somehow the boys make it out of the film with their unformed senses of self intact and their whole touch-and-go blue-collar lives ahead of them.