There is an entrenched tradition of realism in British cinema, ranging from kitchen sink films of the ’60s to the signature Steadicam shots of Alan Clarke, up through the TV films of Mike Leigh and as recent as “Hunger,” the striking debut of Oscar-winning Steve McQueen. There was surely no other approach on the table for photographer and artist Richard Billingham when conceptualizing his debut feature film, “Ray & Liz,” an autobiographical account of his childhood. After prominent berths at Locarno, TIFF, and NYFF, “Ray & Liz” makes a stop in Montreal as a selection of Festival du Nouveau Cinéma’s avant-garde strand. The often rigorous formal approach taken by Billingham might be in keeping with his art practice, but “Ray & Liz” is nonetheless an unexpectedly funny and memorably warm debut effort that displays some real filmmaking chops.
“Ray & Liz” swings between two tenses; the first finds the titular Ray (Patrick Romer, with Justin Salinger portraying the character in his younger days) living out the last stages of his life in a cramped, nondescript bedroom. From here, the film flashes back to episodes in his children’s youth when the family was still whole, comprised of his wife Liz (Ella Smith) and their sons Richard and Jason. Don’t expect the major beats of the titular characters’ lives; “Ray & Liz” is a film about the minutiae. It is the finely-observed details in the mise en scène that Billingham’s employs to chart social transformations in the U.K. (and, in some ways, the ways in which things remain unshakably static).
The first flashback is a particular testament to Billingham’s promise as a storyteller, which documents an ill-fated encounter between Jason’s babysitter Lol (Ben Wheatley regular Tony Way) and the family’s rebellious border, Will (Sam Gittins). The hilarity of the elaborate measures that the young man goes to fleece the witless sitter is matched by the cruelty of Liz’s response to the immaculately arranged tableau left behind by Will. It’s a captivating initiation to the key figures of Billingham’s life but also serves as a major showcase for Smith in the role of Liz. The actress makes an unforgettable impression in a role that largely consists of chain-smoking and putting together jigsaw puzzles.
The autobiographical label is best evidenced in the rich, lived-in textures of the film. These details often anticipate dialogue-driven clues to the character’s circumstances. For example, the first flashback places an emphasis on Richard’s cassette-tape recorder and the family’s color TV, suggesting relative material wealth but, more accurately, that we find the household in its sunset moments of middle-class affluence. The color TV is meaningless in the next flashback, which focuses primarily on the younger of the children, Jason. Breakfast sandwiches of white bread and red cabbage speak to the family’s dire straights long before the power is cut.
The narrative itself is never really tied to Richard’s specific point of view, and the novice director manipulates past-to-present dissolves to suggest the older Ray hearkening back nostalgically, even though he only serves as a peripheral character in the flashbacks. Billingham surely has a lifetime of memories to draw upon, replete with the same potent cocktail of humanity and hardship as the recollections that made the cut for “Ray & Liz.” The structure transforms the film into more of a pointed homage to his mother, bristling with personality and temper—even cruelty—and his brother, the most tragic victim of his parents’ misfortunes (Richard, close to the age of majority in the second flashback, is more socially upright and independent). Details like Liz’s elaborate tattoos and Jason’s broad fondness for animals—he even keeps a trio of pet snails—are illustrative of the vivid portraiture on display.
The director’s experienced eye as a photographer is most apparent in close-ups that accumulate to offer a rounded depiction of his young life. The 4×3 Academy ratio is his frame for these punctuating images which offer a kind of rhythm to the proceedings, breaking up any conventional narrative momentum. These occasionally indulgent digressions might come across as slight or padding if not for the rich, deeply-felt texture they lend to the film.
With his first feature-length effort “Ray & Liz,” director Richard Billingham avoids the most significant pitfalls of autobiographical and social-realist cinema: mawkish sentimentality and over-the-top miserabilism. The brighter spots, like a charitable (and more affluent) neighbor who takes in Jason at a particularly low point for his parents, offer a genuine respite. Likewise, the family’s misery is never strained past the point of credibility. Arguably, the film is never more despairing than its opening segment and the shut-in elder Ray’s introduction, whose spartan routine consists of downing three liters of home-brewed beer and little more. It’s a bleak, lonely end to a muted, off-screen amour fou. [B+]