Late Night Shopping

An easygoing first feature about a group of twenty-somethings 'trapped in a twilight world of permanent night work'. The director began his career as a runner on Shallow Grave, but the protagonists here are nothing like the characters in that film. Despite their unsocial hours, they're a curiously wholesome, good-looking bunch who while away their spare time drinking endless cups of coffee and cooking up romantic conspiracies. The inspiration was clearly Diner. The dialogue here doesn't come near Barry Levinson's heights and the film suffers from being set in nowhere-land (like where are we?), but it's an ingeniously shot and easy film to warm to.