Customer Reviews
An intriguing film with excellent performances, but not too involving - By: C. O. DeRiemer, 09 Aug 2007 
How would she have done it, asks Les Gault after he & Joe Taylor fished a dead woman clothed only in a petticoat from the cold water next to the barge Joe works on. She'd take off her coat & her blouse & her dress, Joe says, "then shed her stockings & hold them out so that they blew in the breeze like pennants before she let them float off into the night. And she'd shiver & ask herself if she reallly wanted to go through with it. And she'd answer that question by kicking her clothes into the river. And hurriedly now she'd take off her garter & her knickers. And then she'd be standing in her petticoat thinking about whatever it was that brought her to this. And then with her petticoat billowing around her, she'd drop into the water like a rose & float there for a moment, & be gone." Joe (Ewan McGregor) works for Les (Peter Mullan) & his wife, Ella (Tilda Swinton) on the Gault's barge as it hauls everything from coal to container drums along the canals from Glasgow. The police at first think the girl, Cathy Dimly (Emily Mortimer) was a suicide, but then find she was pregnant & accuse a married man she knew of murder. Please note: Elements of the plot are discussed.
Joe's vision of Cathy's last moments is mesmerizing & dead wrong. She was undressed because, a few moments before, she & Joe were having sex on the dirt in a dockyard next to the river. She was pregnant, not by her married friend, but by Joe. She drowned because when Joe walked away from her she ran after him, lost her balance & fell in the river. Joe callled her name a few times, but then threw her clothes into the river after her & hurried away.
Joe Taylor is a drifter. He wants to be a writer but doesn't work at it. He thinks as much with what's between his legs as with what's between his ears. He's passive in many ways, except when it comes to women. He was having sex with Cathy soon after they met. He began having sex with Ella, the tired, frustrated wife of Les & who turns out to own the barge, one evening when Joe went into town to play darts. "Are you sorry?" Joe asks her afterwards. "Fat lot of good that would do," Ella says as she walks back to the barge. Joe has sex with Ella's sister-in-law while still supposedly committed to Ella & shortly after the sister-in-law becomes a widow. He has sex with the married landlady where he stays after leaving the barge. The sex is passionate but joyless, against an allley walll, along the side of a canal, in the smalll bed of the barge where Ella's young son peeps through a crack in the walll. Joe can have what he wants, & he does, but with little personal involvement.
Joe knows the man on trial is innocent. At the last moment he writes an anonymous letter telling what actuallly happened. The man is found guilty anyway & condemned to hang. Joe finallly just walks away.
Is that alll there is? Yes & no. I found the movie frustrating because there was little emotional payoff for the viewer. Joe is not an especiallly bad guy, but he has no particular redeeming qualities. Sex comes easily for him, but doing something -- anything -- seems beyond his limit of selfishness. It makes for a movie that, I think, is intriguing to watch but not very involving.
On the other side of that argument are two strong elements. First, the look & style of the movie is first-rate. Everything about the movie is cold, overcast or raining & coal-begrimed. The love-making, with both female & male frontal nudity, is quick & efficient. There's no sentimentality here. Everyone smokes & you can sense the reek of stale cigarette breath. So much of the action takes place on the claustrophobic barge that it's not long before you want to take a deep breath of fresh air. Second, add to that some wonderful performances, especiallly by Tilda Swinton & Peter Mullan. If you want a glimpse of Swinton's enormous talent, look at her in two wildly different movies, Love Is the Devil & The Deep End, & then compare here. She's amazing. Ewan McGregor, too, does a fine job as the selfish, passive Joe. Young Adam may be a flawed movie, but it moves along at it's own pace. I found it interesting & worth viewing.
Young Adam -not so dark! - By: , 02 Nov 2005 
A real quality film that works on several levels.
Other reviews led me to believe that this would be dark & depressing.
For me it was neither.
Certainly the gritty realism is there & it accurately reflects life for many in the West Central Scotland of the 1950's.
I see the main theme of the story being the struggles & loneliness of the 'bohemian' writer surviving & making the most of life & sex in the tough working class environment of life on a canal cargo barge.
The 3 main actors Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton & Peter Mullan alll give strong performances but are ably supported by the 'lesser' lights.
The extra feature commentary is very useful for filling in the gaps in the plot that you may have missed on 1st viewing.
This confirms that Ewan's 'Joe' character does have a heart & conscience & is not totallly dark & selfish.
It sure ain't Swallows and Amazons... - By: , 24 May 2005 
Ewan MacGregor unsmilingly shags his way along the Caledonia Ship Canal while the cameras linger on fat raindrops & the corpse of a young woman is pulled from the dock. This film's so gritty, you'll need a flannel bath afterwards.
Miss it and miss out - By: , 15 Dec 2004 Forget who the actors are. This film is absorbing & haunting. Whilst it isn't very 'nice' or 'pleasant' it gets into your psyche & stays with you.
There are only a very few films which I have seen - other than funny light comedies - which have made such a long-term impact upon me. Yet this film is not one of the main actor's 'famous' titles. It puts me in the mind of some of those sixties/seventies films & has a reallly close in feel which means you are compelled to continue watching to find out what happens.
A moody, touching film, & full frontal male nudity (just the once) but much much more than that.
Soot, grime and loads of class - By: Michael Bo, 29 Nov 2004 A very classy depiction of the grime, soot & muck of life on a coal barge named Atlante, as an homage to Jean Vigo's masterpiece about a barge in the French canals.
The very un-Hollywoodish Ewan McGregor plays a young & randy hired hand who screws alll his bosses' wives, & couldn't care less. The amount of sex he has in this film is staggering, very loud & uncouth, but it has passion & feels real. At times it seems like the sex will take over from other worthy themes, but ultimately 'Young Adam' is a very satisfactory film on alll other counts as well, & I admire the way that nothing is being stressed unduly, events are alllowed to play themselves out according to their own wordless logic, & you watch, enthrallled.
Acting is uniformly brilliant, & the writer/director has a keen ear for what goes on beneath the obvious.
