DANGEROUS PARKING/RISKS PAY OFF

Parking isn’t the only dangerous thing about this film from Sliding Doors directors Peter Howitt, says writer Neil Johnson. Alcohol is another major threat as there are copious amounts of the stuff consumed by the film’s hero/anti-hero, a wayward filmmaker played by Howitt, and his cohort cameraman, Sean Pertwee.

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Then there are the drug adventures, a bacchanalian attitude toward women (including a delightful Saffron Burrouws) and a gleeful disregard for all morals and sensibilities.

For the record, the dangerous parking in the title refers to an incident when the inebriated/drug addled filmmaker once suddenly decided to do a full stop and abandon his car … in the middle of a motorway!

So all in all a wholly perilous story, and one based on fact, as well, recorded in a recent, best selling memoir.

Yet there is another risky element to this Dangerous Parking ... it’s narrated completely in the first person.

This may not seem that worrying initially but think about the consequences.

When you read a book where the main character is virtually talking to you, you inhabit his psyche and subconscious, he takes you where they want you to go and the only control you have is your personal vision of how he sounds and looks.

First person narrative as a filmic technique is so much more of a gamble. If you meet someone in a pub and they rub you up the wrong way, you simply walk away. However, watching a film, other than walking out the cinema, can mean you’re stuck spending time with someone you just don’t like but have to put up with to get through a story.

Dangerous Parking at first had me feeling uneasy with the ultra-personal monologues; like I shouldn’t really be present to a stranger’s inner workings, their demons, their relentless human faults.

However, it couldn’t be any other way. Howitt’s tragic story is not only a great adventure that many of us won’t experience; it gives us the chance to taste a life we only really have the nerve to observe anyway.

For all the judging you find yourself doing - he is, many times, an atrocious irredeemable egoist - but everyone will recognise aspects of themselves within him that we don’t like to admit to.

In the end, the first person style makes this shabby hero, and the film, vividly human, uncomfortable at times but ultimately affecting.

If you are feeling brave, check out DangerousParking.co.uk.

Dangerous Parking opens nationwide on Friday, May 23, 2008.

Copyright Neil Johnson.

Posted May 12, 2008.