THE GOOD BOY

These are the questions posed by Poznań-born director Jan Komasa (SUICIDE ROOM, CORPUS CHRISTI), and they seem to lie at the heart of his work, as his second international production once again makes clear.

The title character, Tommy, is played by Anson Boon, the young British actor who terrorises London as Eddie Harrigan in the series MOBLAND and seems almost designed to invite trouble. Unsympathetic characters may well be his forte: in Komasa’s film, Tommy is just as brutal, cocky and intoxicated by the power he holds over those around him. But the good times end abruptly when, after a heavy night out, he is abducted by the mysterious Chris (Stephen Graham). Tommy wakes up locked in the basement of an outwardly mild-mannered family who, with all their talk of “love”, are perfectly prepared to beat him into submission, convinced that force and violence can straighten out a damaged member of society.

Komasa offers his own answer to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, with a streak of bleak humour that would not feel out of place in a Lanthimos film. In Bartek Bartosik’s debut screenplay, he finds a productive tension between rawness and absurdity, violence and vulnerability, giving him plenty of room to play with genre. The cast are completely at home in these contradictions, particularly Stephen Graham, whose genial, fatherly face makes his sudden shifts into stern disciplinarian all the more chilling.

Komasa’s cinema remains confrontational, drawn to uncomfortable grey areas where the boundaries within the family as a system become dangerously thin. A distinctive Polish-British co-production.

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Text: Michał Sołtysek