A genuinely exceptional cast sits at the heart of this tender, sweet, yet politically and socially conscious comedy. Alex Lawther’s awkward, intelligent, and loving Amberson is spellbinding, while Jonah Hauer-King’s lovable, misunderstood, but spoiled Winchester is superb. Both young men are from different sides of the tracks, hiding from one another yet needing each other all the same. Old Boys is now showing in selected cinemas nationwide.
Edmund Rostand’s 1897 play, based on the life of Cyrano De Bergerac, has provided the backdrop for many films over the years, and I am sure the play’s themes of love, friendship, difference, artistic drive and unrequited love are well-known to the majority of people reading this. This familiarity with Rostand’s work and the countless film and theatre adaptations creates a significant problem for new filmmakers. How do you adapt Rostand’s play into something new and fresh? BAFTA award-winning short filmmaker Toby MacDonald might just have managed that tricky task through a talented young cast and a witty and engaging screenplay in Old Boys.
In Old Boys, MacDonald plays with the classic themes of Rostand’s play while adding layers of discussion around coming-of-age, isolation, and the need for belonging in adolescence. The resulting movie treads a similar path to 10 Things I Hate About You, but equally found its own unique voice by exploring Rostand’s classic work inside the restrictive walls of a British boarding school. Old Boys is a love letter to simpler times when smartphones, email and digital media didn’t dictate teenage communication and a cutting dissection of the imperialism and class divide still present in ’80s Britain.
MacDonald’s movie finds its fresh voice through its location. Here, we explore platonic, hidden, unrequited love within a British boarding school environment similar to If…. and Another Country. This is a stifled, testosterone-driven world that shuns ideas of love, respect and kindness in favour of bravado and bullying, with Cyrano’s classic enormous nose replaced by the disfigurement of wealth and position in British society.
A genuinely exceptional cast sits at the heart of this tender, sweet, yet politically and socially conscious comedy. Alex Lawther’s awkward, intelligent, and loving Amberson is spellbinding, while Jonah Hauer-King’s lovable, misunderstood, but spoiled Winchester is superb. Both young men are from different sides of the tracks, hiding from one another yet needing each other all the same.
Meanwhile, in Pauline Etienne’s Angus, we have a strong female character who longs for freedom through creativity and seeks release from the social control of a male-dominated world. Old Boys wears its heart on its sleeve throughout, with some cracking comedy. However, it is within Macdonald’s reflections on the bumbling nature of teenage love, virginity, and emerging self-confidence in a class-driven society of damaging social divides that Old Boys shines.
Director: Toby MacDonald
Cast: Alex Lawther, Jonah Hauer-King, Pauline Etienne
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