Like Father

The Amber collective paints a typically droll, touching and perceptive portrait of three generations of men - a music teacher whose increasing absence from home and taste for booze is putting pressure on his marriage; his confused young son; and his ex-miner father, facing eviction from the land where he has his allotment and racing pigeons. In the process, Amber maps out the socio-political contours of life in the modern North East. The film deals deftly with civic corruption, the sex war, class conflict, the generation gap, idealism, compromise, recrimination and regret - not bad for a low budget film. But Amber's distinctive blend of documentary-style 'realism' and melodrama (literally 'drama with music', here as in Sirk) has always worked miracles, and Like Father is infinitely more honest, adult and affecting than the vast majority of current Hollywood movies.