Submarine

Submarine

97 min  -  Comedy | Drama   -  3 June 2011 (USA)

Director:             Richard Ayoade

Writers:               Richard Ayoade,

                            Joe Dunthorne

Stars:                  Craig Roberts,

                            Sally Hawkins and

                            Paddy Considine

Submarine is a 2010 coming-of-age comedy-drama film adapted from the 2008 novel of the same name by Joe Dunthorne. The film is directed by Richard Ayoade and stars Craig Roberts, Yasmin Paige, Sally Hawkins and Paddy Considine. The film is Ayoade's directorial debut.

Plot

 Oliver Tate (Roberts) is a 15 year-old Swansea boy who is convinced that he is an unrivaled genius, fantasizing about the impact on the public from his untimely death, when in fact he is an unsocial and alienated. He is in love with a mischievous but straight-talking girl named Jordana (Paige) in his year, and goes as far as bullying people to impress her. One day he agrees to meet with her after school to help devise a method of making her ex-boyfriend jealous, in where she takes photos of them kissing and makes fake diary entrances, and leaves them around the school. However this plan backfires and the two are seen the next day cornered in a courtyard by the entire year being taunted and jeered at, Oliver being kept in a headlock until he calls himself gay, and says to Jordana that she's a slut. When he refuses to do the latter, and mocks the bully, the next scene shows them both lying in the courtyard, Oliver with a bloodied nose. When they walk home, they suddenly kiss, and Oliver quickly establishes Jordana as his girlfriend.

At home, Oliver, from monitoring the position of the dim switch on his parent's bedroom light, and from investigating the contents of his dad's (Taylor) medicine cabinet, believes that their relationship and sex life is falling apart and that his dad is depressed. Worse yet, the flamboyant dance teacher Graham (Considine), an ex-boyfriend of his mum's (Hawkins), has moved in next door, and his seductive and flirtatious character is rousing Oliver's suspicions.

Meanwhile Oliver's relationship with Jordana is growing, but he discovers that her mother has developed a brain tumour, and that there is a high chance that she might die. Oliver recalls reading a passage stating that when a child's pet dies, they find the grief of the death of a human acquaintance easier to bear, so he makes a futile attempt to poison her beloved dog to make the death of her mother less painful. But before he makes his attempt, he finds out that it has been hit by a train. That evening, he visits Jordana's house for Christmas dinner (held early in case she dies from the tumour before December 25) and he witnesses her father break down. When returning home, he decides that the Jordana, whose pyromaniac urges and mischievous character that he loves, is at risk because the emotional events surrounding her will "make her gooey on the inside", and decides not to contact her, because he thinks that it will give her false hopes of her mother's survival: an example of his unintentionally cruel and incompetent social methods.

When it becomes clear that his mother and Graham are having an affair, that his father definitely is depressed, and weeks of staying away from Jordana, he looses himself and makes a full attempt to repair his parent's relationship, but is cut short when he finds a note on new-years-eve from his mum informing that she and Graham have gone to the beach. He tracks them down there, and whilst searching for them on the crowded shore, sees Jordana and another boy together. Heartbroken, he heads home, but on the way back, sees his mother climbing into Graham's van, and assumes the worst. Enraged, he returns to his neighbourhood and breaks into Graham's house, committing minor acts of vandalism to give Graham the impression that he would do anything to get him away from his mother. When Graham returns home, he finds Oliver lying under his bedsheets, drunk (from breaking into his drinks cabinet). Graham returns Oliver home. The next morning, Oliver awakens to see that both his parents aren't angry with him, and understand his revolt, and soon they reconcile.

However, Oliver is still distraught about the end of his relationship with Jordana (whose mother did in fact not die, making his hopeless efforts to restore her character pointless), and is unable to obtain an audience with her to explain his actions. Frustrated, he sulks about for weeks, until when he is walking alone on the beach he sees a red coated figure with a dog on the shoreline. Running towards her he explains his actions (albeit unconvincingly), and learns that Jordana has broken up with her new boyfriend, but leaves Jordana, who has a wholly negative attitude to him because of his neglect to her, unimpressed. But Oliver stays with her until she finally finds the heart to forgive him, and they are both able to laugh about the entire affair.

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