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Driving into adulthood
DRIVING LESSONS
Directed by Jeremy Brock
Certificate 15
IT is a scene that will be familiar to anyone who went to school in Camden. The boy in a William Ellis uniform shyly approaches the girl from Parliament Hill – the backdrop is the Lido swimming pool, where hundreds of teenage romances have played out.
And then the two love birds make their way up to the top of Hillway in Highgate, where the benches offer adolescents some privacy for a stolen snog and a great view over London.
These opening scenes make the start of Driving Lessons particularly pertinent for the Camden viewer. The story by director Jeremy Brock is loosely based on his own north London teenage years, when he worked for the Hampstead actress, Dame Peggy Ashcroft.
Our hero Ben (Rupert Grint) is enduring a dreary school holiday. He is 17, and the years of living under the yoke of an overbearing traditional mother has produced a young man whose understanding of fun would fit on the back of an envelope.
His dad, a vicar, is a little less unpleasant than his mother, but overall the pair are examples of the horror of Evangelical branch of the Church of England.
Holidays are standing in circles and chanting about the love of Jesus and being taught to drive by his mother.
But then he gets a job working for ageing actress Evie (Julie Walters), and her influence on him is going to change his life forever.
He gets whisked off to Edinburgh where he meets the exotic Byrony (Michelle Duncan) and, after an evening of dancing to a Celtic Mambo band – the best part of a complicated soundtrack – he learns more about life than he bargained for.
Rupert Grint, in his first major role since leaving Hogwarts and Harry Potter, has little to do but look occasionally awkward and frequently angry: not too hard to do for a teenager.
Walters has some classy moments. Taking Ben on a camping trip, she declares in wonder at the nature around her that she “knows now why the working classes have kept camping a secret”.
Her lines are littered with swear words, which she rolls round her mouth as if savouring a fine wine, and then spits in his direction. She tells him bitterly that “there is no God, you hopeless little cretin”. But the pair strike up a friendship.
The downfall of this film is why Evie or Byrony would waste their time with such a boring character as Ben.
But this aside, Driving Lessons is a comic film without being introspective enough to be the coming of age rites of passage yarn it aims to be. |
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