It's A Free World...

Rating:

* * * *

Verdict:

Pointed, occasionally unsubtle, but brilliantly acted critique of exploitation.

Ken Loach, doyen of British social realist cinema, does not often allow himself the luxury of irony. So this film's title may not be what it seems.

Its tone is more that of the aggressive pronouncement - Kiwis tend to say "it's a free country" - by which we reject criticism of our actions.

Loach has always been concerned with how exploitation of the powerless requires a quite deliberate abdication of moral qualm by the powerful and here it is his central theme. But, for the first time I can remember, his main character is not an oppressed battler but an oppressor.

And the film sneaks this fact up on us: the difference between treading and being trodden on, Loach suggests, is just a matter of perspective.

Single mother Angie (Wareing) is a brassy, busty bottle blonde who works for an agency that recruits in Poland for British employers. She is not above mixing business with pleasure or having her palm crossed and she sure knows how to see off the unwelcome advances of a sleazy colleague.

When a display of this feistiness costs her her job, she sets up her own agency, riding the streets of the East End on her throaty motorcycle, scouting for illegal-immigrant talent.

As her standards gradually erode - in her rush to undercut rivals, she gets less picky about documentation and then she hits on an ethically suspect way of maximising her profit - Loach ponders the gradual, almost invisible, process by which escaping exploitation requires us to exploit others.

The clever, nuanced screenplay, by Paul Laverty (who has written every Loach film since 1996, apart from

The Navigators

), leads us to expect a standard redemption narrative, when Angie gives one of her workers a lift home and gets a glimpse inside his life.

But the story has a couple of other tricks up its sleeves: Angie, happy to ignore the law when it suited her, finds no comfort when she seeks its protections. Maybe Loach does do irony.

Depending on your perspective, you may find the inconclusiveness of the downbeat ending realistic or exasperating, but Loach has never offered the analgesia of easy answers. He can be accused of unsubtlety too - Angie's flatmate Rose (Ellis), exists mainly as Loach's mouthpiece and Angie's conscience, and she's too bald a character as a result. But this is everything you expect from the old warrior, and it's driven by a lead performance as good as any he's got on film. Recommended.

Peter Calder

Cast:

Kierston Wareing, Juliet Ellis, Leslaw Zurek

Director:

Ken Loach

Running time:

96 mins

Rating:

M, contains violence and offensive language