PRAISE FOR THE FILM "SUBMARINE"

Get back to Rushmore, Max Fischer. The latest embodiment of the adolescent male at his most nerdy and self-deluding is Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), the duffel-coated hero of “Submarine”. Growing up in a Welsh valley town in the 1980s, he is determined to get the school pyromaniac into bed before his 16th birthday, but is hindered in this mission partly by his own pretension (“King Lear”, he pronounces, is “Shakespeare’s most mature work”), and partly by his fear that his prim mother, Sally Hawkins, is going to run off with her ex-boyfriend, Paddy Considine, despite his leather waistcoat and Kajagoogoo haircut.

Borrowing a few tricks from “Annie Hall” and “High Fidelity”, “Submarine” sees events through Oliver’s blinkered eyes, so his drab life is counterpointed by his vainglorious daydreams: the film opens with the nationwide candle-lit vigils which, he imagines, would follow his death. It’s funny, inventive, painfully accurate, and a deeply impressive directorial debut by Richard Ayoade, who also wrote the screenplay, adapted from Joe Dunthorne’s novel. Something of a geek icon himself, Ayoade is best known as Moss in Channel 4’s “The it Crowd”. He’ll soon be best known as one of Britain’s most promising film-makers.

Submarine British release, March 18th

~ NICHOLAS BARBER