An anecdotal ragbag detailing the life of a "skint" Catholic family in Depression-era Liverpool, principally from the point of view of the stuttering seven-year-old title figure (Anthony Borrows, a fresh face, almost featurelessly smooth in repose, expressively dented in action). The fear-mongering Catholicism is laid on a bit thick, even if it hadn't been stale from the start. (Jimmy McGovern, the scripter, is the grudge-holder who also wrote the anticlerical Priest.) A profitable offshoot, however, is the little boy's mental torment after he barges in on his mother at her bath and spies the triangular thatch inconsistent with the marmoreal nudes in his Art History book. A budding John Ruskin, as it were, till his confessor sets him straight. Even richer is his older sister's complicity in an illicit love affair within the walls of the well-to-do Jewish household where she toils as a maid. The milieu has much in common, down to the communal sing-alongs, with that of The Long Day Closes, though without Terence Davies's transformative and unifying vision. Even so, it's a fine-looking movie, flexibly directed by Stephen Frears, shiveringly atmospheric, with an image simultaneously soft and gritty, and a somber yet colorful palette somewhere in range of Degas. With Ian Hart, Claire Hackett, Megan Burns, and David Hart. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd
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