My Name is Joe
Peter Mullan (ORPHANS, MISS JULIE) won the Best Actor award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival for his performance as Joe Kavanagh, a recovering alcoholic in his late thirties. Like half the people in his impoverished Glasgow neighborhood, he's unemployed and struggles to get by between odd jobs and the dole, along with coaching a ragtag soccer team largely consisting of delinquents. As difficult as his life may seem, he's buoyed by a willed optimism that he realizes is the only alternative to reverting to his addiction. When he's caught by a niggling unemployment official while doing the odd wallpapering job for social worker-nurse Sarah Downie (Louise Goodall), she helps to keep him from losing his sinecure. The two soon begin a tentative relationship, but Joe remains connected to his former life through his young friend Liam (David McKay), an ex-con and former addict. Mullan is utterly believable as another of social realist director Ken Loach's characters attempting to negotiate the tough climate of 1980s Great Britain.
Member Reviews
Peter Mullan is a delight - luminol
Drama. Peter Mullan plays Joe Kavanagh as a fidgety bundle of energy, moving forward, and keeping busy is almost a defense mechanism. He keeps crossing paths with a social worker on her rounds. Sarah Downie works in one of Glasgow's more rough and tumble areas; she's quick with a sympathetic ear and a helping hand---but having seen the worse of the worse, she's equally adept at tough love the moment you start playing games with her. She remains kind of a mystery.
Joe on the other hand, is an open book. He's been holding fast on the wagon for nigh on 10 months now, and proud of his accomplishment. The only avenue open to him is brutal honesty, so he lays down all his cards on the table before her. This budding romance between these two skittish thirty somethings is the best thing about this film.
As Joe explains late in the film; some people have no options. They're trapped and scrape through as best they can. Even if the choices before them are horrible to horrendous. They still have to choose. Joe does what he thinks is a chivalrous deed in order to save a young family from tragedy (the father being one of the lads from his soccer team) only to be left with two choices, both of them heartbreaking.
As always, Loach doesn't pander to commericial concessions by casting actors with posh accents. If this is the way the majority of Glasgowians speak, so be it.
Member Reviews
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Peter Mullan is a delight - luminol
Drama. Peter Mullan plays Joe Kavanagh as a fidgety bundle of energy, moving forward, and keeping busy is almost a defense mechanism. He keeps crossing paths with a social worker on her rounds. Sarah Downie works in one of Glasgow's more rough and tumble ...