Carol Morley’s 7 Miles Out, screening at BFI London Film Festival, is a truly stunning coming-of-age film that surprises, enthrals, delights and brings a tear to the eye.
One of the wonders of owning a tape recorder back in the 70s and early 80s was the freedom it gave young people to record their own radio shows, talk shows, or even analogue voice diaries. I certainly wasn’t the only kid who spent hours trying to piece together tape recordings into some self-gratifying radio show that only I would ever hear. As Carol Morley’s 7 Miles Out opens, based on her own semi-autobiographical novel, 11-year-old Ann (Amelie Hughes) does the same. Ann worships her aspiring rock-journalist elder brother, Scott (Kasper Hilton-Hille), and documents daily life with her small tape recorder in their semi-detached Stockport home.
Life is good for Ann, and although the family don’t have much spare cash, it’s a happy, supportive home where Ann’s mum Bryn (Gemma Whelan) does everything possible to provide for her kids. Plus, things are looking up: Ann’s reserved, chain-smoking father, Ronald, played by the fantastic Aidan Gillen, is about to start a prestigious new job seven miles out in Manchester, and has even been given a fancy almost-new golden-brown Ford car.
Ann loves her dad; in her eyes, he is the cement that holds their family unit together. But beneath his quiet facade, and through the haze of the cigarette smoke that follows him, he’s a man on the edge. When he leaves the house in his newish car and drops Ann off at school, everyone expects him to return home at the end of the day, tired from his new role. Yet, Ann’s dad doesn’t return, and family life suddenly and sharply turns from contentment to confusion. His actions that day, and the discovery of his body days later in the car that was never his, a tube running from the exhaust to the passenger-side window, shape everything to come for Ann, her sister, brother and her mum in a society where suicide means shame, and family finances suddenly vanish.
We follow Ann (Lucy Halliday) as she grows, from the late 1970s and into the early 1980s. As we walk by her side, we see her school life crumble, her and her mum’s home life morph from a semi-detached in Stockport to a boarding house for those with no permanent address, and her love of music take flight. Ann’s small group of friends becomes her world, particularly best friend Hel (Leila Entwistle), who gets her and shares her love of Joy Division and the emerging Manchester music scene.
Music is Ann and Hel’s lifeblood, so they start a band. Yet as with all teenage friendships, life often has other plans, and just as news of the suicide of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis reaches their ears, life is about to change again for Ann. However, it’s not the end of the journey by a long stretch in Morely’s poignant yet rambunctious coming-of-age film.
The late, great Terence Davies once said, “What memory does is that you remember the intensity of the moment; but you remember it sometimes in the wrong way and out of order. But that doesn’t matter… The fact is that it’s the intensity of the moment that is remembered.” Morely’s film often feels like an ode to Davies unique cinematic style, as 7 Miles Out takes memory, grief, music, and the moments that shape ordinary life and moulds them into an exquisite portrait of adolescence.
Morley’s eye for detail lets your own dusty memories come back to life while capturing a moment in time when Britain changed dramatically through music, art, politics, and social policy. But this is also a film that profoundly focuses on the scars left behind by suicide and the stigmas surrounding male mental health that, while not as pervasive, are still very much present in our modern world.
7 Miles Out is very much an ensemble picture that thrives on the wonderful, natural, assured, and often fiery performances at its heart. From Lucy Halliday and Leila Entwistle’s exploration of the ferocious energy, excitement, and uncertainty of youth to Gemma Whelan’s powerful and heartbreaking depiction of a mum perched on the edge of collapse, this movie is built on performance and assured, passionate direction. The result is a film so rich in tone, detail, emotion, style and music that it leaps from the screen and into your heart.
From its screenplay to its performances and soundtrack, and from its ability to evoke memories to its exploration of how society, community, politics, and art shape us as we grow, Carol Morley’s picture is a truly stunning coming-of-age film that surprises, enthrals, delights and brings a tear to the eye.
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