The opening film in Terence Davies' powerful Liverpool-set Trilogy introduces Robert Tucker as a withdrawn young boy, bullied at school and terrorised by a violent father. His strict Catholic upbringing hinders his sexual awakening and as a young man he's still living at home with his mother. A visit to the doctor for anti-depressants elicits little sympathy ("still no interest in girls?").
Up Next in Shorts
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Death and Transfiguration
The anguished finale of the Terence Davies Trilogy opens with the death of Robert Tucker’s beloved mother, jumping forward in time to show an elderly Robert bedridden in hospital (an astonishing appearance by Steptoe and Son’s Wilfrid Brambell). Fragments of his past - a school nativity play, mal...
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Eros Erosion
Transience and desire, and the silence and concealment surrounding sexuality, love, death, AIDS, and the fear of bereavement, are all touched upon among a rush of abstract and allegorical connections in this artist film from 1990 by Anna Thew.
