Herald rating: * * * *
Robbie Burns' haunted ballad for star-crossed lovers backgrounds British film-maker Ken Loach's intriguing twist on Romeo and Juliet. This Muslim-Christian relationship is set in Glasgow - which has a large, longtime Pakistani community - after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Loach collaborates again with
Paul Laverty, a human rights lawyer who changed career to screenwriting, and a cast of largely non-professional actors.
Casim (Atta Yaqub) has grown up Pakistani and Scot, middle child and only son of a traditional family who fled their homeland amid the horrors of the 1947 partition from India to run a corner store. A DJ with dreams of opening his own club, he will cross paths with Roisin (Eva Birthistle), a music teacher at a Catholic school.
This sets up a web of conflict: Casim's older sister is about to marry, and her wealthy fiance will be shamed; Casim's own pre-arranged marriage is threatened; he is distanced from his parents and practising his faith.
Roisin faces her own challenges: her marriage has dissolved, she is at odds with her church and her job is under threat; she has not been exposed to and cannot understand Casim's world.
Loach is one of the most idiosyncratic film-makers around, working a tender story and an intelligent script that doesn't favour any side, but his leads aren't quite up to the job (Yaqub, in particular, leans on his previous career as a model and spends most of his time in a pose).
There's a remarkable cameo from Gerard Kelly as an old-fashioned parish priest who spells out Roisin's "obligations", and a nice turn from Shabana Bakhsh as Casim's younger sister, also confronting the reality of modern life v traditional wife.
Loach features heavily on the DVD, using the making-of to explain how Scotland's Pakistani community faced a high level of hostility after September 11, and discussing his approach to film-making and the themes connecting his films in a 45-minute interview recorded at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2004. Laverty joins Loach for the commentary track - both making plain their distaste for the wave of racial bigotry in Western countries - and there are deleted scenes and bloopers.
* DVD, Rental Video Today
