Departure

Andrew Steggall's feature debut, after a few decent shorts.

The (homo)sexual awakening of an adolescent boy and a mother's meltdown. When a reviewer (or anyone for that matter) says...it starts off well...you just know that it is not going to end as well as it started. Departure starts off well...

Juliet Stevenson does Juliet Stevenson...in other words, she is unstretched...even as a rather dissolute mother. On the other hand, the remarkably young-looking, Alex Lawther is amply awkward with his burgeoning sexuality. The scene with the carrot may make a few viewers wince...and provided Ms Stevenson with one of her two killer lines. Mothers know everything that goes on under the family roof.

Now, you would be forgiven in thinking...this was a story about a teenage boy who has a crush on an older teenage boy...and, it is...with the will it happen, won't it happen underpinning the entire structure...that is, until the script takes it to a different place entirely...into the middle-aged, middle-classed Mother's misery. It then falls apart and limps - lamely - to its flaccid conclusion.

The unrealised (i.e. squandered) potential of the film is a minor tragedy in itself.

Middle-class misery in the South of France is a far cry from financial desolation in Deptford. With neither empathy nor sympathy being earned, Steggall's debut feature flounders, somewhat fatally...it should have been all about him (the lip-lusting son)...not her (the loose-lipped mother)!

Trailer...