Berfrois

Will Self’s Alley

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From The New Statesman:

What’s not to admire about this film? In succession we are introduced to the following: the corpse of an Argos catalogue bloated with rainwater; an upended plastic flowerpot; waxed-paper coffee cups; Guinness and other beer cans; apple juice cartons and a paradoxically static McFlurry container; a turkey baster perhaps abandoned after some strange act of artificial insemination (particularly strange because the alley runs alongside a small Catholic church); a Ribena carton and the serendipitous sequence of two empty Polish beer cans – Lech followed by Tyskie – which suggests sexual incontinence followed by an admonition. This is by no means an exhaustive list; nor does it convey the subtlety of the film’s camera­work, as we nose in and out of the shrubbery, teasing apart leaves to expose shyly sheltering Jack Daniel’s miniatures.

“You loved the BBC’s “phantom ride” up a canal. So join me on a phantom walk . . . down an alley”, Will Self, The New Statesman