Ratcatcher

Toldi, october 7. saturday, 20.00, Kossuth 4, october 13. friday, 18.00, Örökmozgó, october 9. monday, 20.30

Kossuth 4 october 15.  22.00

Lynne Ramsay's first feature more than bears out the extraordinary promise of her previous short work. This film about childhood is on a par with such classics as Victor Erice's Spirit of the Beehive, Ken Loach's Kes, Bill Douglas' My Childhood or François Truffaut's Four Hundred Blows. Set in a tattered Glasgow during the 1970's dustmen's strike, when the rubbish piled up around the run-down tenements, ominously encroaching on the inhabitants' lives, it centres on 12-year-old James (William Eadie) and his family. In a startling opening sequence, James becomes party to a terrible secret as he plays by the local canal. His sense of the world is irrevocably changed by this, but the incident also inspires a strange fascination with the thick snake of black water. It is on the canal bank that he befriends Margaret Anne, a gawky pubescent girl who is easy prey for the local gang of boys. The two strike up a tender yet innocent relationship, which proves a respite for them both. But James yearns for another sanctuary, a golden place where life can be all right again; this dream is realised when he takes a bus out of town and discovers the shell of a new housing estate, lapped by fields of corn.