1970's low-end Glasgow looks like an alien landscape in this horrifically depressing chronicle of a young boy's barren life. Set amid a refuse collection strike, the film makes piles of rotting garbage look like part of the infrastructure: rats, dead dogs, and head lice all but crowd out the people. One hopes it's overdone, but you suspect that's barely so. There's no inspiring teacher or rich relative or benevolent neighborhood drug dealer or any of the media of escape that such films often use to lighten the vision: when the kid visits a new housing construction site, and marvels at the space and promise of tranquillity, he might as well be aiming for the moon (which is the ultimate destination, in the film's most explicit evocation of fantasy, of a mouse tied to a balloon). The picture has immaculate control; maybe too immaculate - the viewer may just decide it's too well-crafted and artistically poised a vision of gloom to be true, and quickly sweep it from his or her mind in search of something more heartening. Especially as the film has a carefully ambiguous ending which allows the faint-hearted the option of doing exactly that.
Review of Ratcatcher
