Breaking up is hard to do, sang Neil Sedaka, and Mercedes Grower plays out that sentiment in a quirky, original and often funny film, which neatly subverts Hollywood romcom tropes.
It's an episodic piece (with a stellar cast) that cuts between nine couples breaking up with resignation or despair, angrily or comically. There's some unbearably honest writing, but also some rather less accomplished scenes that have the feel of improvised material.
And some stories work better than others, but there are a couple that stand out. Julia Davis is wonderful as Livy, a self-obsessed, talent-free actress smarming her way into a role and into the director's bed (Peter Wight, both pictured below) while considering a fling with fellow actor Karl (Seb Cardinal); Elliot (Julian Barratt) is a touchingly innocent man-child swooning over straight actor Raymond (Oliver Maltman) whom he tries to win back by buying him an ice cream.
While there's some nice comedy in those episodes, in others there's a dark undertow – such as middle-aged couple (Kerry Fox and Roland Gift), whose marriage won't survive their booze-sodden mutual loathing and resentment; or the break-up between Peter and Susan (Paul McGann and Kate Hardie), who have clearly been at this point in their relationship many times over the years, in that on-off-on-off-again revolving door that so many would recognise.
Grower herself appears as Layla in the most discomfiting story. Layla is heavily pregnant by Daniel (Noel Fielding), a nasty piece who works in a sex shop and denies he's the father, and spends every moment dribbling a football, which he gives more attention than he does to her.
Despite being made on a tiny budget, 'Brakes' often looks like a love letter to London
In the second half of the film the couples' stories are rewound for a briefer series of scenes where we are told how they got together. We see the fun and laughter of those first encounters – a couple bonding over a mutual interest in books, or a comic misunderstanding at work, or how Daniel's boyish charm, and later drugs, won over Layla, or how Raymond met Elliot when he was on a lad's weekend in Barcelona and somehow ended up back at Elliot's flat
A few stories are difficult to engage with: the posh businesswoman regretting a one-night stand with a builder who turns out to have been stalking her, an artist getting involved with a man who suffers from perpetual ennui, a long-distance couple whose Skype relationship falters with their broadband connection.
Grower – writer, director, actor and producer – shoots London on a handheld camera through the seasons. Despite being made on a tiny budget, Brakes often looks like a love letter to London while offering bleak insights into dysfunctional relationships. It's an accomplished debut.
Overleaf: watch the trailer for Brakes
But this is also nature, in the sheer physical sense, at its most impressive (pictured above). The craggy coast around the cluster of houses that makes up the isolated village rises up towards spectacular mountains, which somehow dwarf any human activity with their scale. In summer, as the light stretches around the clock, the beauty is awesome, memorably captured in Norwegian cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen’s widescreen vistas. But we sense that when winter comes – Heartstone closes as the first dusting of snow falls – the cold isolation of the place will be as complete as the luminous airiness with which it seasonally alternates.
The father has gone off with a younger woman, and any sympathy for their mum's tentative attempts to find someone to date in this backwater is notably lacking. We see what it involves for her when the adults get together for the village-hall dance – a thrash, if ever there was one – and her attention falls on the outsider Sven (Søren Malling, a visitor in every sense: he’s Torben, from Borgen). Nevertheless there’s a sense of tough-love affection in this family unit that is finally reassuring, as well as an element of comedy to the sisters, Hafdis (Ran Ragnarsdottir) particularly; she writes poetry of Plath-like intensity that she reads out at meals.
Jamie Bell (pictured above) is charming as the young Turner, a compliant beau with a kind heart, wide shoulders and neat footwork. They meet cute when he channels Tony Manero to help Grahame practise the hustle. It’s fun to see that Billy Elliot still has the moves but it is Bening’s shimmy that breaks your heart. This is her movie and it's aimed at the Academy. She captures Grahame’s breathy voice and sharp wit perfectly; her pleasure in her young lover is clear, as is her wistfulness for the classical stage career she never had. Bening doesn't dodge the lens which highlights her own ageing face and gives a superbly brave performance. I found myself scurrying back to The Grifters, the neo-noir she made in her twenties, where she plays exactly the kind of playful moll that Grahame trademarked in the 1950s.
Too many scenes in the kitchen in Liverpool threaten to sink the film into kitchen sink realism; Walters overdoes the loveable tolerant mum act. While I was grateful that there weren’t too many chunks of clunky exposition shoe-horning Grahame’s scandalous marital history into the dialogue, t
Casting major actors like Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Jason Leigh as his train-wreck girlfriend is a significant step up from the Safdies’ previous film. Heaven Knows What (2014) featured unknown non-professionals as actors playing versions of themselves, homeless heroin addicts trying to get their next fix. Buddy Duress (pictured above) was one of the Safdies' street discoveries and he gets a key role in Good Time.
But it’s getting a big star like Robert Pattinson and giving him a dark, meaty role that has amply paid off here. By this point, he's well and truly escaped from the languid vampire of the Twilight films. Connie is a superbly ambiguous character. Is he just an opportunistic thug duping everyone around him, or is he genuinely protective of his disabled brother? Good Time would make an interesting double bill with Rain Man, another tale of brotherly exploitation with a major star choosing to play against type. But unlike Rain Man, there’s very little moral redemption in the Safdies’ nightmarish vision especially in the third act, which includes the ruthless manipulation of an underage girl (Talia Webster, pictured above with Pattinson). All neon and nastiness, Good Time is both exhausting and exhilarating.
Watching his bravura performance at the lectern throughout is his wife, but Marston's eye is particularly drawn to Olive (Bella Heathcote), a student whose doll-like prettiness (and an aunt and mother who are pioneer feminists) intrigues him. His desire for Olive is briefly thwarted when she demonstrates that she’s more interested in snogging his wife than him, but they soon settle into a scandalous sexy threesome and Marston is forced to leave the university.
Prettily made with some nifty 
