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Three English male twentysomethings who have problems with or are obsessed by the opposite sex, pushed and prodded towards reality by a fourth friend, a sensible young lady of the same age, could result in a film both ultra-clich茅d and under-written as first efforts often are. That "Late Night Shopping" is neither is down to a regular supply of smart ideas from writer Jack Lothian and director Saul Metzstein, who between then have made some pretty distinctive television documentaries. "West Coast Story", which charted 150 years of the Glasgow-London train, is but one example.
The characters of the four leads, however, do not become full-blooded for quite a while, so the film opens up with just the inane chat and idiotic jokes of youth, in other words dialogue which has yet to be pegged to character. But that does happen, and the film becomes considerably richer.
"Late Night Shopping", which also captures the insecurity, arrogance and nonsense of youth, follows the rather odd routines of the four friends, individuals who are rather thrown together by their visits to an all-night caf茅 which, since they are all night-shift workers, provides them with a social life. Sean (de Woolfson) is a hospital night porter whom never sees his girlfriend due to him working nights and her days; Vincent (Lance) is a supermarket shelf-stacker, an egotistical, sexist stud whose antics give the others a buzz; Lenny (Cilenti), who gives out numbers for directory enquiries, is a quiet, troubled obsessive, a sexual fantasist who doesn鈥檛 even know how to greet a girl; and Jody (Ashfield), who is a factory worker unsure of her attractiveness to men.
The threads which connect these characters are finely spun, often by means of strong comic ideas, like Sean checking the size of the soap to work out if Madeline (Makatsch) still lives with him. Nonetheless, in a generally engaging tale of young lust, elements of the ending, where they all drive to the seaside, do smack of plot-contrivance and phoniness.
"Late Night Shopping" is released in UK cinemas on Friday 22nd June 2001.
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