Ken Loach's 'Looking for Eric': preview

We offer our thoughts on the forthcoming Ken Loach film, 'Looking for Eric', which stars ex-footballer Eric Cantona

Last summer, Time Out had the privilege to watch Ken Loach making his new film ‘Looking for Eric’, which will be released in cinemas on June 12. It was the third time in a row we’d been on one of the filmmaker’s sets. We’d travelled to Ireland for ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’. We’d jumped on the underground to east London for ‘It’s a Free World…’. Now, here we were in the suburbs of Manchester with 72-year-old Loach as he was shooting in a rundown semi-detached house. Local actor Steve Evets (one of the leads in ‘Summer’ last year) was playing a postman down on his luck, depressed and not knowing which way to turn next in life. As ever, the crew was small, the feeling intimate and friendly – but this time there was a new member of the Loach team: Eric Cantona, who had been announced as one of the producers of the film.

Now the first trailer for ‘Looking for Eric’ has been released (see below) – and we’re excited by this upbeat-looking, bizarre beast of a film. It looks like a male-bonding ensemble piece of sorts, and the presence of Jon Henshaw (that big bloke from the Post Office ads) suggests a lot of laughs and much northern banter. There’s a surprise factor to it, too, which makes it sound like a bit of an oddity and may be why its makers have been calling it ‘magical social realism’: some of this film may take place in its lead character’s head. Or it may not: it may be left to us to decide.



Watch the trailer, and two other things are obvious: the film is being sold as a comedy and, maybe even more surprisingly, it’s features ex-Man Utd footballer Cantona not only as a producer but in an acting role too.

But maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised by either. Loach is a big football fan and a devoted supporter of Bath City FC. And who can forget that famous school footie scene in his 1969 film ‘Kes’? More recently, Martin Compston was prone to kicking about a ball in the Scottish-set ‘Sweet Sixteen’, which was also written by Loach’s regular writing partner, Paul Laverty. Also, when it comes to laughs, Loach is too often thought of as producing miserable or dour films, simply because he’s interested in the working class and the real world. It’s not true. Don’t forget those films of his from the early 1990s, ‘Riff-Raff’ and ‘Raining Stones’ – the second of which began with a hilarious set-piece involving actors Ricky Tomlinson and Bruce Jones stealing a sheep from a field and then attempting to sell it to a local butcher. And even Loach’s most sad films, like ‘Ladybird Ladybird’ and ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’ have always been blessed with moments of pure joy.

But there’s no precedent for the presence of Cantona in the film. It’s a first for Loach – casting a big name is a rarity for him, casting a big-name footballing legend unknown – but it’s also something of a first for cinema. Cantona might already have acting pedigree, but this time he’s playing himself. Or at least a version of himself as the figment of someone else’s imagination. Yes, it’s confusing and even more so as we haven’t seen the film yet. But what we can glean is that the poor, down-on-his-luck postie played by Evets takes a drag on a spliff, starts talking to a poster of his footballing hero in his bedroom and… the next thing you know Cantona is standing there, talking back to him and offering his own life-coaching services. Strange, indeed.

We’re hugely looking forward to the film. It sounds risky and it sounds unusual. It may even be a surprise hit. Could a socially-aware comedy set in south Manchester, with no songs and a lot of scraggy-looking northern blokes exorcising their demons be the surprise ‘Mamma Mia!’-like hit of summer 2009? Maybe that's going too far, but even Loach is grudgingly accepting that he might have a full-blown comedy on his hands. Add Cantona to the mix, and it could be his biggest film in years.

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