ADULTHOOD/TOUGH GROWING UP

Nightmares tend to be unrealistically one-sided, usually on the down side. So it is with Adulthood, a relentlessly scary portrait of growing up. Unrealistic? Yes. But very moving nonetheless.

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There tends to be a few redeeming moments in even the most violent of films. A time when it turns out that the bad guy likes his mother or at least animals.

Here there is nary a smile, let alone a laugh in sight.

Following a young West London man on the first 24 hours of his release from prison for a murder, it sees his dreams of a peaceful re-integration into society quickly go from bad to worse.

Actually, that should be from worse to worse again, as his day starts off very badly, with someone attempting to kill him, and ends the same way, with someone trying to kill him.

The young man in question is Sam, the star of the landmark film Kidulthood, which ended with him heading to prison at the end of a tumultuous teenage period, for killing a rival, albeit it somewhat accidentally.

Alas, whatever his intentions on his release, the murder had repercussions for everyone in the neighbourhood, from his victim’s nearest and dearest, including his pregnant girlfriend and, particularly, his brother to the perpetrator’s own family.

To put it mildly, they are fed up with how the years have passed, as they have turned into adults, and they are determined to have revenge, no matter how Ghandi like Sam seems to have become during his incarceration.

In what follows, there is plenty of visceral violence, but equally frightening is the loneliness, the ignorance, and the unhappiness of one and all, trapped in a world where money is more important than decency; sex is a cheap as cannabis; and friends are only friends when it is convenient.

Is this story in any way a plausible portrait for modern society? Frightening as it is to contemplate, life may actually be so unremittingly bad for some people at the wrong end of the social scale.

Certainly Adulthood is carried out with a passion and intensity that makes it seem all too convincing at the time. Just like your worst nightmares.

Adulthood opens on Friday, June 20, 2008.

Posted Monday, June 2, 2008.