Young Adam (2009)

From NetFlix:

A young drifter named Joe (Ewan McGregor) finds work on a barge that travels between Glasgow and Edinburgh. But when the corpse of a young woman is found floating in the river, is Joe really telling everything he knows? Making things even messier is the unspoken attraction that develops between Joe and Ella (Tilda Swinton), one of the barge’s owners, in the barge’s claustrophobic confines. Emily Mortimer and Peter Mullan co-star.

If you ever wondered what some film stars look like when they are completely naked, now’s your chance. If you take away the nudity and all the sex scenes you are left with Ewan McGregor as a hollow shell of irresponsibility and self gratification. Supposedly he is so sexually attractive that each woman he gets close to (i.e. one or two feet away) is eager for a sexual encounter whether it be in a boat, on some public foot path, in some alley, on lying on the ground in some train yard.

Composed of a mixture of events from the present and from the past, little by little you put together the whole story. For most of the film the question is: Will our non-hero actually let an innocent man be hanged? Stay tuned.

Is Scotland really that gloomy? We spend a lot of time looking at either dreary weather or Ewan McGregor staring off into space. Do you notice that I am trying to steer you away from this downer?

It would be fair to summarize this film as “What’s the point ?”.

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