I have no idea what the meaning of the title is, maybe something to do with Adam and Eve, but I guess it doesn't matter, this sounded like a good film to try, and the cast list was very appealing, so I watched. Basically Joe Taylor (BAFTA Scotland winning Ewan McGregor) is the young drifter who works on the barge owned by Les Gault (Peter Mullan) and his wife Ella (BAFTA Scotland winning Tilda Swinton), they travel between Glasgow and Edinburgh transporting coal and other cargo. One day Joe and Les find the body of a dead young woman floating in the water wearing nothing but a petticoat, and they drag it out for the police to determine whether it was a murder, a suicide or an accident. As his work continues, Joe starts looking at Ella in a different way, slowly and eventually managing to seduce her with his attraction for her, and with Les not around they start a sexual affair. As the police investigates the death of the woman, and they are putting the blame on her ex, we find out from flashbacks that Joe knows more than he is admitting. Before the death happened, he met the beautiful young office worker Cathie Dimly (Emily Mortimer), who he also manage to charm her, they start living together and have a lot of passionate sex. As Les becomes aware of the affair between Joe and Ella, that is when in the flashbacks it is revealed that the dead body is indeed Cathie, and she fell in the water by accident, after admitting that she was pregnant with Joe's baby. We also see in further flashback that Joe had an aggressive side, and back in the current time he is still keeping quiet about his involvement with Cathie. In the end Cathie's ex is found guilty of murder and no proof is found that it was an accidentally death, Joe leaves Ella and Les's canal boat with nothing but a guilty conscience. Also starring Jack McElhone as Jim Gault, Therese Bradley as Gwen, Ewan Stewart as Daniel Gordon, Stuart McQuarrie as Bill and Pauline Turner as Connie. McGregor, putting his meat and two veg on show once again, is really good as the conflicted and sex addict, Swinton does almost steal the show as the sex-craving barge woman, who also gets naked, and Mortimer in the flashbacks is very good, with her clothes off too. The film is just stuffed with sexual scenes, and with the dead body premise it combines film noir and melodrama, all adding up to a well crafted and most watchable period drama. It won the BAFTAs Scotland for Best Director for David Mackenzie and Best Film. Ewan McGregor was number 9 on The 100 Greatest Movie Stars, he was number 2 on The 50 Greatest British Actors, and Emily Mortimer was number 47, and Tilda Swinton number 44 on The 50 Greatest British Actresses. Very good!
Review of Young Adam
