The Low Down

Frank (Gillen) is dimly aware he'll have to grow out of this life. He's stuck in a slummy flat-share in Dalston, N London, passing girlfriends, dull contract work, and pals who take the piss. An appointment with Ashfield's easy-going estate agent Ruby offers him the chance to mark his card in more ways than one, but will he take it? Maintaining the promise of his short films, Thraves' unassuming feature debut offers an incisive, impressionistic inscription of twenty-something London experience: moving on, settling somewhere and making the mistakes you'll live with. As before, the writer/director's focus is on the everyday minutiae of friendship, betrayal and romantic diffidence - Frank's problem is his hesitancy, inarticulacy and indecision - here presented in a freewheeling style that's light as a postcard. The cast, too, are apropos. Gillen is bashful and brooding, Ashfield infectiously optimistic, and Menzies, Kelly and Proctor engagingly gabby and/or unsettled as Frank's friends and flatmates. Fresh, funny, new wavey and wistful, it's quite a delight.