CARLA'S SONG (50)

Directed by: Ken Loach

Starring: Robert Carlyle, Oyanka Cabezas, Scott Glenn

The Pitch: In 1987 Glasgow a bus-driver falls in love with a traumatised Nicaraguan refugee, following her back to her war-torn homeland to try and find her family.

Theo Sez: The third consecutive Loach movie featuring the romantic convergence of Latin and Northern British sensibilities, and by far the least resonant, partly because the Latin half of the equation - the titular Carla - remains very much an abstraction, more a handy shorthand for our hero's political education than a real woman ; and partly because it just tries to do too much. The early scenes - set in a well-detailed Glasgow, and powered by Carlyle's regular-guy mix of spiky and affable - promise much, but when the action shifts to Nicaragua halfway through it's like the beginning of a whole new movie ; and, what's worse, a movie that tries to compress a complicated situation into only a few sketchy scenes, and to evoke in less than an hour the atmosphere of Third World chaos that the whole of Oliver Stone's brilliant SALVADOR barely managed to suggest - not to mention, of course, that Loach's undoubted virtues (gentle compassion, a feel for "small" human moments) are certainly not Stone's. The result feels inevitably rushed and overcrowded, the final effect deadening despite many likeable and / or effective scenes. It might have worked if the politics was as knowledgeable and astute as in the great LAND AND FREEDOM, but unfortunately this is a case of ideology masquerading as truth : even those of us who agree that US policy on Nicaragua in the late 80s was beyond immoral find it hard (or should find it hard) to accept these happy peasants giving homilies on the redistribution of property as an accurate picture of this or any other revolution.