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LEAN ON PETE
***
Dir: Andrew Haigh
Starring: Charlie Plummer, Steve Buscemi, Chloe Sevigny
(USA, 15, 2hrs 2 mins)
British writer/director Andrew Haigh returns after the quiet successes of previous character led dramas with his first American movie. His previous work, gay romance Weekend and the heart-rending drama 45 Years, with Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courteney, established Haigh as a winning talent, capable of capturing the nuances of various relationships.
His latest film is focused on a boy and his horse, in an adaptation of Willy Valutin’s 2010 book. The vistas are bigger, with the American landscape a huge character in this trotting road movie. Charlie Plummer plays teenager Charley, who works at the stables run by pragmatic Steve Buscemi as a way of escaping his miserable home life. Essentially an orphan with an absent mother and a feckless father, he travels with his adopted family, Buscemi and jockey Chloe Sevigny, competing in races with the horse Pete, but when Pete stops winning, he’s bound for the knacker’s yard. Charley absconds with Pete and gets lost in the American wilderness; the second half of the film blends Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas with miserablist social realism.
Buscemi shines as ever and Plummer roots the occasionally obvious material with an honest reality. The first section of the film whistles along, an elegiac take on a fast disappearing aspect of American life, as the dysfunctional, makeshift would-be family of Buscmi, Sevigny and Plummer travel to dusty racetracks with their horse in tow.
Once Plummer absconds with Pete, to whom he has got too attached for obvious reasons, the film loses much of its charm and wanders a grim trail. Well acted, but a little cliché ridden, especially as boy and horse struggle together in the desert landscape, Haigh allows the pace to flag as Charley’s plight continues, but this is still a horse ride worth taking.
words KEIRON SELF
Out from May 4 in cinemas