David Mckenzie
Young Adam

The essential compendiums and encyclopedias do not mention the name Alexander Trocchi, many of you may have never heard of him. He was an Italo-Scottish writer belonging to the Beat generation movement. His was an intense personality that led him to debut with some pornographic stories to shock the well-meaning and devote himself to writing a few but interesting texts that still do not achieve great editorial success. A personality that forced him into a life of hardship, ending in destitution and solitude, only heroin remained faithful to him until the end. Overshadowed by the pen of his other colleagues, the victim of a ruthless critical judgment, castigated by his own nature. Nineteen years after his death, documentarian David Mckenzie has revived the sixth novel by Trocchi by making a homonymous film: "Young Adam".

In 1950s Glasgow, Joe Taylor works as a laborer on a barge for Ella, the owner, and her husband, Leslie. The plot unfolds along two main directives: the first follows the evolution of a romantic relationship between Joe and Ella, a ménage à trois that will culminate with the expulsion of the third wheel (the spouse), and then degenerates with the protagonist's gradual disinterest in Ella. The second begins with Joe and Leslie finding the semi-nude body of a woman in the waters they are navigating. That corpse represents Joe's great secret. He has an unsettled past as an emerging writer shared with the young Catherine Dimly, who, at the end of a night meeting, reveals to him that she is pregnant. Not convinced of the paternity attributed to him, Joe becomes furious and during an argument, he inadvertently causes Cathy's death. An innocent plumber is accused of the murder but Joe does not seem to feel remorse.

In an interview with Rolling Stone U.S.A., Tilda Swinton (Ella) expressed indignation at the censorship imposed on "Young Adam", which even went so far as to stamp the film with the dreaded "Red Sticker" while in Italy and many European countries it went unnoticed. Beyond the reflections that might arise considering that from 1957 to today in terms of elasticity, we have not exactly evolved, Mckenzie's first feature film is indeed impactful, without a doubt. Certainly not because Ewan McGregor (Joe) shows the bird or because an abundance of sex scenes (some cinematically memorable ones), but the film as a whole is loaded with an exacerbated realism, portraying a degraded reality vividly and essentially (a large aspect of this is tied to Mckenzie's desire, who is also the screenwriter, not to stray from Trocchi's novel). It's not easy to remain impassive in front of the chosen settings where the characters move, suffice it to mention the dilapidated barge advancing along the Clyde River like a wreck, the disordered and anonymous interiors, the sad and squalid alleys of the city perpetually dominated by the grey skies of Britain.

Beyond this aspect, consider the identity of the characters. Joe's danger does not solely lie in his being a murderer (even if accidentally) without a conscience, but the viewer manages to perceive it, if only implicitly, in his dual nature: he is the tool through which Ella regains her lost femininity after years of work and with an almost impotent husband (Peter Mullan in particular, who is also a director; "Magdalene") and at the same time, in the flashback scenes describing his past relationship with Cathy, reveals an attitude of despotic and violent arrogance; shifting from passive to active. Similarly, the expressive capacity of Ella's prematurely aged body and Leslie's senility lived in the worst ways (playing darts and drinking) contribute to the raw power of the film and functionally revolve around the protagonist, perfectly drawn in his psychology, that of a man who hides under the apparent coldness and detachment of his sexual experiences a magma of disarray and chaos.

From a strictly technical perspective, the director proves his worth especially in the way he handles the story. To maintain the atmosphere of tension and in order not to deviate from the genre line followed by the novel (not easy to define. Some wanted to speak of a philosophical-thriller given the stylistic and content differences even with noir and complete distance from detective stories), the work is almost incomprehensible and the urge to change viewing is strong but the balanced use of flashbacks restores the situation and manages not to disorient let alone shatter the story. The excellent performance of the cast, among which Swinton stands out, impeccable in the shabby role of the house owner, more masculine than the husband himself and the lover, and the music of David Byrne positively close the account of an engaging work.