Road

Shot on location in the grim, terraced housing estates of northern England, “Road” is a sharp, funny, sad, angry film about life on the poverty line. When Jim Cartwright’s stage play opened at the Royal court Theatre in March 1986, it provoked a strong reaction from the critics: here was an authentic “new voice” of British drama, a potent mixture of brutal realism and tough, cogent poetry. It is Saturday night. From the vandalized, bricked-up houses of a northern slum, the down-at-heel Road-dwellers emerge to celebrate the week-end. They are the rejects – no jobs, no motives and no hopes. Young, old or middle-aged, they drown their sorrows in booze and sex. But Carol and Louise are on the look-out for something different, some new excitement to make the evening hum. Will they find it in Brink and Eddie, on the surface two ordinary Lancashire lads, whom they meet in a seedy dance-hall?