Be not deceived by the Merchant Ivory name attached to Ratcatcher; those in search of repressed emotions among the corseted well-to-do will be in for a nasty shock. For this is a Scottish working-class film, and, like its compatriots The Acid House and Orphans, it is laden with squalor and violence. These tend to go together in almost any country, which is why people who come into money don't tend to stay living in the slums, but the Scottish, if we are to believe many of the films we see (especially those that claim to be realistic), are like Klingons: Beating each other up is more or less a daily ritual. Generally, we've been shown youth with shaven scalps smashing bottles over one another's heads while watching soccer, or something like that, but Ratcatcher goes deeper, as first-time filmmaker Lynne Ramsay gives us a look at where it all begins, in childhood.
Trainspotting: William Eadie as James, with one hell of a neurosis to overcome.
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Opens Friday
Lumiere
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Set during a garbage strike in the 1970s, the film initially focuses on young Ryan (Thomas McTaggart), a boy of around 10, whom we first see twisting himself up in a curtain. It's established that he has a nagging mother, an absent father, and a 12-year-old playmate named James (William Eadie). A standard setup, we think. Then, without warning, Ryan falls into a canal and dies.
It's a risky gambit, killing off the apparent protagonist so soon into the game, but it works, giving James one hell of a neurosis to overcome, since he started the play-fight that led to Ryan's drowning, although no one knows this but him. It's not as if he doesn't have enough problems: As is the norm for this kind of story, there are two siblings, Dad (scar-faced character actor Tommy Flanagan) is a drunk, both parents smoke and swear constantly, and the neighborhood kids seem to have started down the path to violent thuggery.
James' principal means of escape comes when he spontaneously decides one day to take a bus to the end of the line. He finds himself in the country, by a new housing development, which, without any apparent workers, becomes an adventure playground. He takes a fictional bath in the polythene-wrapped tub, urinates in an unattached toilet, and stares longingly out an empty window frame that overlooks what must be the largest open field in the United Kingdom. These scenes almost recall the final delusion in Terry Gilliam's Brazil, or even the tacked-on ending of the non-director's cut version of Blade Runner: Here is the fantasy world that stands in stark contrast to the filth-ridden urban wasteland. The place may not even exist at all -- the fact that James' parents never notice his absence hints at that possibility, as do later developments that we won't reveal here.
Back in the harsh realm of the real, James makes do with life by befriending Kenny (yes, he wears an anorak, but so do all the other kids), a simple-minded child with a love of animals and a wide imagination; and Margaret Anne (Leanne Mullen), a 14-year-old who, for want of a better term, is the local slut -- she constantly and voluntarily puts out for the neighborhood boys, who generally can do nothing but act abusive in return, throwing her glasses into the canal, among other things. James, of course, is the one person who does treat her well, and she reciprocates by initiating him into the ways of love (it should be noted that both get very naked on screen with each other, and both are clearly underage -- maybe in Europe they're "sophisticated" enough to see this without flinching, but all prudish Yanks are hereby warned).
Writer/director Ramsay has a deft touch throughout: Her actors all seem natural, and her occasional touches of magic realism -- such as a scene in which Kenny ties his pet mouse to a helium balloon, which we then see landing on the surface of the moon, a place overrun by similar rodents -- help to soften the blows of squalor. She also has a good sense of irony: The Chordettes' hit tune "Lollipop" has never been put to better, or more disturbing, use as in the scene of domestic trauma which it underscores here. And the ending is nicely ambiguous, alternately interpretable as tragic, beautiful, or both.
Finally, a word about subtitles. As with many Scottish films, they're needed even though the characters are ostensibly speaking English. In Ratcatcher's case, however, one gets the feeling that Americans may have an advantage over viewers in the film's native land, as the subtitles cover spoken dialogue that's barely even audible in some cases, let alone comprehensible. The "translations," while generally accurate, do have a funny habit of occasionally transcribing dialogue phonetically rather than linguistically, so that "dog" sometimes appears as "dug," and "home" as "haime." A working knowledge of Scot-speak may prove helpful in these instances.
