Lean On Pete isn’t at all like Andrew Haigh’s last film with the word “Pete” in the title. Greek Pete was a biographical mostly-documentary about the life of a London rent boy. It was adult in both senses of the word.
Lean On Pete is YA, young adult, the coming-of-age tale of a lonely 15-year-old lad. No sex, no sign of any metropolis, no Brits. Haigh has set out to transform himself entirely as a film-maker and has succeeded entirely. If the whole thing even gets a bit aw shucks now and again, that’s probably also deliberate.
His admirably direct approach remains the same, however, as it has been in all his films to date. Haigh launches us straight into the life of Charley, the solitary motherless son of a womanising dad (Travis Fimmel) who finds a surrogate family of sorts with a cussing, kindly but dodgy trainer of horses on the fair circuit – the horseracing equivalent of off-off-off Broadway – and his usefully garrulous jockey. Charley, Del (Steve Buscemi) and Bonnie (Chloë Sevigny) look like they’re going to be the sheet anchor of this movie and a Seabiscuit-y arc looks like what’s going to play out. Except the horse in this movie, Lean On Pete, is no champion-in-waiting, he’s more a past-his-best nag dodging the dog-meat factory.
Americana is clearly one of Haigh’s aims, and at around the halfway mark he unexpectedly shifts the action away from various low-grade race tracks, and the promising relationships developing with Bonnie and Del, as Charley takes to the road with Lean On Pete and sets off on foot for Wyoming to try and track down an aunt.
For all the attractions of Sevigny and Buscemi as performers, Haigh throws his lot in with Charlie Plummer, on whose face his camera almost entirely rests. The beauty of Haigh’s writing, which establishes what, where, why and who characters are from the first moment we meet them, is that it gives performers the chance to build on that solid foundation. It allows his actors – see most particularly Weekend and 45 Years – to spend their time on screen adding subtlety rather than doing the basics.
It’s a make-or-break strategy with a young actor but Plummer rises to it. He played kidnapped billionaire’s grandson John Paul Getty III in All the Money in the World and held his own against the likes of Christopher Plummer (no relation), Michelle Williams and Romain Duris – tough crowd. He’s better here as the guarded kid who grows before our eyes into young adulthood, as Charley’s road trip throws him into tough situations and the callow kid is forced into coming out of his shell as a response.
It is all very family friendly, the odd swear word to one side, and probably best suited to people in their mid-teens. To oldsters there is the pervading sense of having seen it all before – the road movie, the Americana, redemption via animal agency etc – though Haigh’s confident and easy-going film-making style means this is more a warm wallow in the familiar than a trudge.
Actually, having checked back over my notes I realise I have seen this movie before, and taken copious notes. Hello, Steve. Perhaps that explains the familiarity. Even so I’m puzzled – I have a vivid recollection of Haigh’s films Weekend and 45 Years which I saw when they came out in 2011 and 2015 respectively (and Greek Pete, but then I watched that only three days ago). Perhaps I was half drunk.
The notes I made back then also mentioned Haigh’s use of sound, which sailed right past me this time. This time I noticed the camera more – how it doesn’t move much but when it does it has real significance.
Maybe I should schedule a third watch.
Lean On Pete – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
