Downhill
Director: James Rouse
Starring: Ned Dennehy, Karl Theobald, Richard Lumsden, Jeremy Swift
★★★ (out of five)
“IT’S EASY to make a new friend, but it’s hard to find an old one,” is the rather rueful muse at the heart of Downhill, a comedy-drama centering on a bunch of 50-year-old mates getting together after years apart and regretting they ever set eyes on each other.
In an age when Friends Reunited and Facebook link people up with old buddies they haven’t seen in ages, this movie shows the reasons why the connections get severed in the first place.
It’s also a touching and honest focus on the niggling, creeping realisation that middle age takes its toll and that most of one’s best times in life have either departed or they never arrived.
Described in the blurb as “a road movie on foot,” it follows the combined travails of Gordon (Richard Lumsden), Keith (Karl Theobald), Steve (Jeremy Swift) and, most crucially, Julian, played by the wonderful Ned Dennehy (pictured far right, above).
Originally hoping to rekindle old friendships on the notoriously challenging Coast-to-Coast hike across northern England (a full 192 miles), the four steadily develop the sense that their trek symbolises the journey of life, and that they’re gradually moving further away from the start and closer towards the end.
Mixing mordant, stinging humour with some softer touches, the narrative slowly unfolds the inner worlds of the four men and the concerns and regrets they keep secret. Refreshingly, the plot doesn’t uncover the usual buried resentments among the group from years earlier, though there are some reminiscences, but instead reveals that their worries are very much of the present day.
They’re all haunted by worries over either money, sex, identity or boredom but there’s no fanciful supposition that settling the past will somehow redeem the future.
As the four begin to feel the weariness in their bones and the blisters on their soles, the strain on their temperaments stretches patience to snapping point: “I’m not a happy man,” cries Keith in a whiskey-soaked stupor.
Debut director James Rouse uses an inspired narrative device as Gordon’s son Luke (Rupert Simonian) films the whole endeavour as part of his media studies course.
This allows the characters to talk directly to the camera, somehow exposing and enhancing their discomfort as their disillusions are revealed. “I’m really suffering here,” Steve whines, only to be told his “suffering makes good viewing.”
Dennehy stands out within the ensemble as the acid-tongued cynic and champagne-sodden sybarite Julian, who’s accustomed to lavish luxury and the unchecked fulfilment of his desires. Yet even he must yield to the inexorable march of time that means hope and expectation inevitably meets with disappointment.
When two young girls hook-up with the guys Julian’s foolish attempts at seduction are excruciating to witness, particularly when his overtures are denied: “It’s never happened before,” he whispers to Luke’s camera.
Of course, there’s a mini-genre of films showing troubled souls pitched into the wild to test their endurance and eventually strengthen their character.
Recently The Stag covered this narrative ground but we could go back to Bogart in The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948) or John Boorman’s classic wilderness/survival tale Deliverance (1972). There are even female versions of the narrative, such as She’ll Be Wearing Pink Pyjamas (1985), which stars Julie Walters.
But the key film echo here is with City Slickers (1991), in which Billy Crystal leads a cast of middle-aged malcontent males on a touristic cattle drive into the American West. Veteran Jack Palance plays a gnarled, narky but wise old cowhand. “You all spend fifty weeks every year getting knots in your chain,” he observes, “and you think two weeks out here will untie’em for ya.”
Downhill won’t be as richly acclaimed as some movies with similar stories but it is a fine piece about bonding, friendship and forgiveness.
That Dennehy has his chance to shine in a main role is welcome, after so often playing support. As one of Ireland’s busiest actors Dennehy never gives less than full value and here he’s undoubtedly worth the admission money.
Downhill is released in cinemas on May 30
