Cemetery Junction.

Cemetery Junction is the debut full length feature from the infamous sitcom writing/directing duo Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant. I think it is safe to say that neither need much of an introduction. Due to the phenomenal success of their previous collaborative efforts (The Office & Extras) this film has been anticipated to be one of the finest British films of the past few years. While it is on the whole a good film, it is certainly not one of the finest British films of late.

The plot revolves around three young lads all in their early twenties. They spend their days working hard-one as an insurance salesman, one in a factory and the other as a conductor at a train station. They spend their weekends 'boozin, fightin, shaggin birds'. Although this description of their weekend activities may sound ridiculous it is displayed with a kind of rustic charm which makes their exploits seem relatively harmless and at times humorous, maybe even charming. The protagonist Freddie Taylor (the insurance salesman) meets an old primary school sweetheart and starts to realise that life in Reading is not all it is cracked up to be and the narrative centrepiece of the film begins to centre around his decision in whether to leave Cemetery Junction to travel the world or stay and work in a miserable job for the rest of his life. No prizes for guessing how it ends.

The most important thing to be noted about this film is that it operates as a modern inflection of the classic British sink drama before a comedy. Do not expect laughs throughout-you will be bitterly disappointed. My main issue with the film came in the awkward situation it places itself within-swaying uneasily between drama and comedy. I don't mind a splice of comedy in a drama, Mike Leigh has proven time and time again that this is possible most notably with the superb Secrets & Lies which if you have not seen you should add it to the top of your priorities. However cinematic newcomers Gervais and Merchant are not as adept as veteran Leigh at comfortably and most importantly realistically merging these two factors. The characters in Cemetery Junction are at times just unrealistically quick and witty particularly in all the conversations between Freddie Taylor and his romantic interest Julie (played by the babe that is Felicity Jones). Their snappy exchanges of jokes are not even punctuated by the character's laughing at each other's comments. Instead their sections of dialogue feel like they have come straight out of a sitcom which creates a very uncomfortable dichotomy between the character's intrinsic wit and their angst. It struck me as odd that Gervais and Merchant managed to get this key relationship wrong when they created such an interesting/funny and most importantly moving relationship between the character's of Tim and Dawn in The Office.

(I thought it appropriate to insert a photo of Mike Leigh here, mainly because it astounds me that he isn't on the sex offender's register. Look at his face.)

The film is however full of fantastic performances despite the often weak and superficial script/character archetypes. Emily Watson is breathtakingly subtle in her portrayal of a long ignored and very bored housewife. Matthew Goode is delicious smarmy as the slimy insurance salesman, in fact I find it hard to knock anything Matthew Goode has ever done. Ozymandius, I love you. Most importantly the three male leads are all fantastic. Newcomers Christian Cooke, Tom Hughes and Jack Doolan provide dynamic and engaging performances and they almost manage to flesh out some pretty 2-Dimensional characters. The script isn't all bad-there are some genuinely funny scenes in the film where the three male leads are simply 'mucking about' together and the dialogue between them flows so smoothly that the relationships between them seemed utterly realistic and engaging. Perhaps the success of these sections of dialogue made the aforementioned failures of other sections seem all the worse. The camera work is never particularly artistic but is adept in telling the story without being at all intrusive. One of Gervais and Merchant's best features as director's is in their cinematographic constraint-allowing the character's to convey the tone themselves without an authorial force weeping it's way into each scene.

Another niggle I had with the film is that certain character's are far too obvious in their narrative function for plot exposition that again they feel more like constructs that would be better suited to sitcom territory. Ralph Fiennes' character is a classic example of this-he plays Freddie's boss and is constantly morose, serious and rude. It is far too obvious that his character serves as a signifier of what Freddie could become if he stays working in Reading. A lot of the dialogue throughout feels overly constructed and again not a realistic depiction of a character-something which is absolutely vital to keep an audience engaged in a drama. The character of Snork acts as a perfect example of this-he is the 'incompetent' one of the group, a joke which is nauseatingly repeated throughout the film with a repetition of a joke about why he is called Snork. Again it seems odd that the scriptwriting genius of Gervais and Merchant fails at this fairly simple task having managed to create an absolutely incredible 'incompetent' character in The Office in the form of Keith and with Barry from Extras. I think it fails mainly because of it's placement as a drama before a comedy, perhaps if they had moulded it the other way around the film would have been more funny and certainly more moving (I definitely cried when Dawn came back to Tim in the last episode of The Office. fuckin' sue me if you have a problem with this) as they would have been cushioned nicely within their comfort zone.

Despite the by no means awful but disappointing script Cemetery Junction is an enjoyable watch. The tale of stifled ambition is very familiar but their are enough laughs to keep you interested and an emotional core which nicely carries the film along at a steady pace. A successful drama should at least cause one or two lump in the throat moments for me, Cemetery Junction unfortunately achieved none. Having said this The woman next to me was sobbing like she had just watched Dancer In the Dark for the first time-clearly an emotionally unstable woman or maybe I was missing something. Either way this is a good film all in all if a tad disappointing but considering it is their cinematic debut I can gladly forgive Gervais and Merchant for the film's problems.