It would take a lot of space to describe the long and windy road that Alexander Trocchi's novel had to go through to become filmed. Almost forgotten beat generation writer, pornographer, drug addict and vagabond who seem to be a person with a lot of talent for destruction, was re-discovered by David McKenzie who made a script based upon this novel. It took several years to get this film made and the fight was tough and exhausting. The leading actor, Ewan McGregor, did many efforts in this direction as well and here we are, watching (even on the Bosnian TV!) a sharp and pretty brutal film about a womanizer who seduces and abandons almost all women in his surrounding. Although the film starts with a romantic scene of a beautiful swan on the calm water, the floating female corps appears immediately after the bird and turns all the beauty into the gloomy mystery. As the story folds up, we discover the secret life of the main characters following explicitly their sexual relationships and hidden past. In a true beat manner it seems that the whole life of the main character lacks some kind of purpose. Joe's senseless drifting from one woman to another comes in the flash-back retrospective episodes while the boat hovers through the channel between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Two men and a woman on the boat more mumble than talk and more communicate with the body language than with words. While Joe seduces Leslie's (great Peter Mullan) wife Ella (absolutely brilliant Tilda Swinton) in the present, it becomes clear that the deceased girl was a young vagrant's previous lover and that he knows very well how she died. Besides superb acting from the whole team, very special taste to this erotic, dark tale gives brilliant music by David Byrne which softens it when it becomes too mean to digest.
Review of Young Adam
