Cemetery Junction

Bea says: I knew nothing about this film when we saw it advertised at our new favourite cinema (the Witham film club in Barnard Castle, County Durham); in fact I thought it was about vampires. I was kind of right as there is a vampire link, but it's very minor. The film is actually an outing from Ricky Gervais, which I vaguely remember being reviewed, and not very kindly.

A classic coming of age plotline, it's set in the early 70s, with somewhat questionable accuracy in terms of clothes and music, and follows the stories of three young men, and one young woman, who all live in Cemetery Junction, apparently a real place near Reading and near where Gervais grew up himself. Cemetery Junction is a dead end town, a place hard to get out of, and the film follows the four's attempts to do just that. Only two are successful.

As a woman myself I was most interested in the storyline revolving around the young woman, Julie, and her mother, Mrs Kendrick, a role that was incredibly well written and superbly played by Emily Watson - a complete show stealer for me, although it was not a main part. This particular storyline tapped into the changing times of the 70s more than any other, as Julie made strong, independent, positive choices about her life - an opportunity her mother didn't have.

It wasn't quite all as spot on as this - Cecil will tell you more - but I don't think it deserved the bad reviews it apparently got. It certainly made me think about life, choices, options, and reminded me of feeling hopeful and young, casting caution to the winds.
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Cecil says: The opening scenes of Cemetery Junction show road traffic, with buses and cars making their way round a street corner. Ah, the 1960s, I thought to myself, only to be slightly troubled when I realised the film was supposed to be set in the 1970s. You could argue that most vehicles on the road in the early 70s were actually 60s vehicles; and my memory of those days is probably rather hazy anyway. But this was not the only thing that felt slightly out of kilter in this film.

The men's clothes bothered me too. Surely nobody in the early 1970s dressed as well as the main men did in the film - Bruce in particular had far too much style for 1974; and only the geeky Snork dressed vaguely in the way my contemporaries did. But maybe that says more about the dress-style of Hull than it does about Merchant/Gervais recollections of the time...

But the timing felt wrong on a deeper level too. I don't actually believe hard-man Bruce would return home and be reconciled with his father by touching his arm. He may have gone home, yes; but then he would have showed his acceptance in far less demonstrative ways: a silent presence; almost grumpy, but no touching - not in the 1970s.

And the same applies to the even more unlikely hug between the two men on the station platform. In Hull, certainly, men did not hug in 1974. And however much further South Reading (or Cemetery Junction) might be, I do not believe that men would hug on a station platform as happened towards the end of this film. I think Merchant/Gervais have forgotten what the 70s were really like for men!

Having said all this and done all my nit-picking, I have to say I actually enjoyed this film. It has a gritty fairy-tale feel to it, if that's possible; Felicity Jones is enchanting as Julie (and yes, of course, her face was familiar because she appeared in that Anglo-French film I saw a year or so ago - and didn't like very much! - Cheri); and it leaves you with that awareness of the battles life throws up between the head and the heart. Which should we follow??
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