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Flashbacks of a Fool (2008)

Director: Baillie Walsh

Time Out rating

Average user rating

33 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

In a scene reminiscent of the ending of Robert Altman’s ‘The Long Goodbye’ – where Sterling Hayden’s suicidal writer strolls out into the sea from his Malibu house – Daniel Craig’s washed-out fortysomething writer, Joe Scott, takes a similarly despairing swim into the Pacific and remembers – in lengthy flashback – his fateful sexual and emotional rites-of-passage 30 years earlier in the glam rock-soundtracked 1970s, in a small seaside town in the south-west of England.

Ex-commercials director Baillie Walsh, in moving country and decade, executes a jarring change of mood, milieu and genre. We are hardly accustomed to his high-tech ’Scope images of the Hollywood elite’s drug- and sex-addled playgrounds, before we’re whisked back to the deceptively snugger, old-fashioned world of this fucked-up career exile’s youth. But it’s hard to read the meaning of his fateful escapades in this world of gaming arcades and rundown beach huts, viewed as they are through the distorting lens of the older Joe’s memory.

The result is an ambitious but disappointing, regret-filled psycho-drama. Some individual scenes are impressive: a portentous, Ian McEwan-lite set-piece involving playing children or the scene illustrating the confusion and nascent vanity of the teenage Joe (the handsome-featured but limited Harry Eden) accepting sex with a conflicted, unhappily married neighbour (Jodhi May), knowing it will disappoint his fellow Bowie-loving first love (the excellent Felicity Jones). But, overall, Walsh’s use of music (Scott Walker) and glossy ‘mid-Atlantic’ direction seems more pretentious than evocative and unsuited to the material, beaching too many of the actors’ performances, not least Craig’s, whose sketchy role precludes any sort of audience sympathy or emotional involvement.

Author: Wally Hammond 2008-04-15 10:06:35

Time Out London Issue 1965: April 17 - 23, 2008

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User reviews of this film

Jenny said...

Posted on Apr 15 2008 14:45 Why does Wally Hammond have to use the f-word on a publicly accessible site. It's not big and it's not clever.
Thought the film was okay. Being a girlie, I couldn't help wishing that I had been naked with Daniel Craig during the opening scene. Nice abs.

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John said...

Posted on Apr 15 2008 14:43 You know, I can't help but agree with the above reviews. I was also at the premiere on Sunday last and I think it was very revealing that the entire audience walked out as soon as the credits started to roll - normally, everyone waits to see their names and those of fellow luvvies-in-attendance in lights.
I won't comment on the storyline as there isn't really one (as you will see from the above). The film itself is a bit like a series of individual advertisements ... a scene in a restaurant with Craig could as well be part of a car advertisement. One at the end of the film where he reunites with his mother might as well be an ad for Ovaltine whereas the UK scenes could all be advertising Hovis. If you take these separately, they are all good entertainment. When you montage them, you might as well be watching Pearl & Dean's own display of cinematic triumphs before the movie.
This is an object lesson in not allowing commercials directors and producers to play at making long-form films (unless you're Ridley Scott).

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Graham said...

Posted on Apr 15 2008 11:52 After good promise in the first 45 minutes of the film where we are taken from current-day LA to 1980s England, the writing leaves the viewer wanting. Why is Joe (Daniel Craig) a washed up actor? Why is what happens in his past really relevant? I think this film suffers the malaise of many UK productions whereby one writer (also the director in this case) is allowed to self-indulge without any supervision. It appears to be semi-autobiographical - not necessarily of Baillie Walsh but the viewer is somehow left feeling that it is a case of "you had to be there" to really understand what was going on.
The locations used are generally not UK, most of the film having been shot in Cape Town. Whilst I am sure this was a nice jaunt for the crew, South African scenery does not really match up to Hollywood boulevards and English beachscapes.

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