Submarine

About the movie

Fifteen-year-old Oliver Tate has two big ambitions: to save his parents’ marriage via a carefully plotted intervention and to lose his virginity before his next birthday. Worried that his mom is having an affair with New Age weirdo Graham (Paddy Considine), Oliver monitors his parents’ sex life and forges suggestive love letters from Mom to Dad. His love interest Jordana is refreshingly complicated; a self-professed pyromaniac, she supervises Oliver’s journal writing – especially the bits about her.
Full of surprises and amazingly affecting, this is a film to fall in love with. Based on Joe Dunthorne’s acclaimed novel, Submarine is a captivating coming-of-age story with an offbeat edge. Oliver is a consummate anti-hero and Roberts plays the role with the necessary cocktail of stubborn egotism and gangly unease. Ayoade, already a rising star in the UK thanks to his work on The IT Crowd and The Mighty Boosh, is clearly a devotee of Godard, employing snippets of music and riffing on his use of colour-coding. But even with the shades of Godard and Wes Anderson, this vibrant film comes off as a real original and marks the beginning of a career to watch closely. Produced by Ben Stiller and Warp Films (This is England, Dead Man’s Shoes).

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