At a time when British film-makers generally are accepting the âmulticulturalism rules, okâ status quo, former documentarian Penny Woolcock lights a match in a fume-filled room with an examination of life among the working classes in Leeds. Shane Meadows meets Shameless is the result, to a degree. Does that sound dull? Because the film isnât at all. Instead Woolcock infuses her drama with a wild pantomime spirit, an unruly bawdiness thatâs reflected in the set-ups, characters and dialogue. Set across a park, on one side of which live the whites, on the other the âPakisâ, the focus falls on Tina (Kelli Hollis), a local white goodtime girl with three kids by different dads, and her family’s interactions with a nearby Asian clan, the action building towards âmischief nightâ â a local variant on Halloween â when good natured pranks teeter on the edge of something much more serious. All our current faves are here â single mums, âgrim up northâ stereotypes, the niqab, smack, shooters, Osama Bin Laden, everything shot through with a dour, bleak humour. One schoolkid to another: âMy mumâs a smackhead.â The other schoolkid back: âMy mumâs a dinner lady.â
Meanwhile, on the Asian side of the park where he lives with his extended family, Immie (Ramon Tikaram) only realises how culturally Asian he isnât when his hot-from-Pakistan wife turns up, jabbering away in a language that isnât his, and demanding sex heâs reluctant to give. Meanwhile, a self-appointed local Imam is laughed at by the local white girls, all of whom he slept with before he became born-again devout, while Asian kids shout âgo home Pakiâ to passing strangers. It hadnât always been like this, as Tina tells her daughter Kimberley (Holly Kelly), the two communities had once lived together, but somehow they drifted apart. Complicated, this multi-culture business.
Life and its dark ironies is what the film is about, but beneath the comedy, Woolcock suggests that cultural differences have hardened, the two-way traffic between whites and Asians isnât as fluid as it once was. Even so, this is a less hysterical view of multiculturalism than you get in the newspapers â though the cultures living side by side can rub each other up the wrong way, they generally rub along. And the conflicts are often an externalisation of tensions within communities and families, not between them. Thereâs no banging the drum for immigration control here.
Perhaps there are too many plots, and perhaps Woolcock isnât always sure how comedic she wants the film to be, an uneasiness reflected in its soundtrack â a sort of municipal city council ragga. But itâs a tough and unusual film thatâs willing to turn over the stone to reveal a fecund chaos beneath.
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Š Steve Morrissey 2006
