Possibly coming to a film festival near you this year is Baby Brother, a remarkable feature debut from Michael J Long. It tells the story of two siblings, Adam and his kid brother Liam, across two separate days, five years apart, and if you do get the chance to see it, please do.
Adam and Liam (Paddy Rowan and Brian Comer) are two brothers brought up on the council esates of Walton in Liverpool. Their mother Joanne (Julia Ross) is a liability; addicted to drink and drugs, and her boyfriend Robby (Billy Moore) is no better; a crude layabout in hoc to a local hard man. With no comfort provided in their broken home, the two brothers seek solace in their own company, wandering the streets with an array of accents and comedy routines they put on to amuse each other. But the toll is beginning to show on Adam who, as the eldest, has stepped up to the plate to not only ensure Liam goes to school and avoids the wrong turns so familiar to him, but is also trying his best to pay off his mum and Robby’s drug debts. As the days play out (shot in black and white to signify the past), the challenges Adam faces take a devastating turn that will deliver shocking repercussions that will continue to be felt in the present day storyline (shot in colour), where it becomes clear that, despite his previous good intentions, there is no real hope left for either of brother.
Made on a micro-budget by emerging Scouse talent, the first thing that struck me about Long’s movie is that he is clearly an admirer of Shane Meadows. Like Long, Meadows started out making movies on a shoestring, roping in his mates to depict the world around them. But those early offerings from Meadows, films like Small Time and Where’s the Money Ronnie, don’t posses the polish that Long has managed to afford his debut feature. Baby Brother owes more of a debt to Meadows’ later work such as This is England, with its scenes of brutal violence, hard living and generational trauma played out by an Einaudi score. That Long has managed to achieve such a comparison so early on and with such limited resources ought to be reason enough to sit up and pay attention, and it certainly deserves acclaim.
A raw, unflinching film that will linger long in the memory, what Long et al have achieved here from such humble resources is both astonishing and encouraging.
Like much of Meadows’ work, Baby Brother is far from a comfortable watch. Tragically, there is no happy ending for the protagonists of Long’s movie and the film possesses a raw, dark reality that may prove to unpalatable for some audiences tastes. There are moments of light on display, but they are fleeting. One particular example can be found in the scene in which the two brothers sneak into a seemingly empty theatre and sit in the stalls, soaking up the atmosphere, only to find themselves privy to a young woman rehearsing Lady Macbeth’s soliiloquy. Amused by her commitment and Shakespeare’s archiac language, they proceed to heckle her before taking flight. It’s clear that Long is saying that the stage is the natural home for Adam and Liam, with their fondess for improvised skits and sketches and their propensity for accents, but it’s equally clear that this is an avenue simply not afforded to them. They’re from a neighbourhood in which such talents are dismissed as simply fooling around, and not something you can consider making a career of. You can immediately appreciate how their schoolfriends would deter them from realising their ambition, damning it as ‘gay’. A working class northern city, Liverpool has a centuries long tradition of industry; its people literally designed and built for manual labour. Even now, though the industries are long gone, the mindset of ‘knowing your place’ remains – a mindset I imagine Long and his cast and crew are all too familiar with and have had to work hard against to reach where they even are now. Yes, the city may have had its fair share of talented creatives achieve incredible success over the years (insert the B word here) but these are still the remarkable exceptions that prove the rule. In the last thirteen years of Tory austerity however, cultural opportunities have dwindled considerably and, only this week as I write, PM Rishi Sunak has disparaged so-called ‘low-value degrees’, proposing to enforce a cap on the number of students accessing creative subjects at higher education level. Once again, the working classes are being built for low-paid manual, retail, hospitality or public sector work. The theatre scene may have only been a brief moment, but it’s a moment of closeness, affection, humour and bonding between the brothers.
The overall uncompromising atmosphere is matched by a fly-on-the-wall filming style, pitching the audience into the complicated, hard lives of the characters. Bleak it may be, but authenticity is key. As a resident of Merseyside myself, I never once observed anything but accuracy from the screenplay co-written by Long and Tom Sidney. The dialogue is heavy with contemporary scouse idiom, which means a hefty dollop of strong language and ableist slurs. The latter in particular has always made me, a neurodiverse person who identifies as disabled, wince, but in the instances depicted here (chiefly the ignorant attitude Adam displays towards the tragic ‘Rafa’, Liam’s brain-damaged friend played by AJ Jones) I appreciate the authenticity. It’s just how people speak, unfortunately. If I did have to complain about anything in the script it would have to be the inclusion of a recurring monologue from a local radio DJ, whose bulletins are used to provide a sense of place and time, but chiefly to inform the audience of certain plot points. It’s an expositional device and, whilst there’s nothing necessarily wrong with it, imitating the tone and patterns of speech from live radio is notoriously difficult, and these sequences always feel scripted and false which, given the grubby ring of authenticity elsewhere, means it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Performance wise, Baby Brother is equally impressive. This may be raw talent, but the rawness actually helps to sell the uncomfortable existences of the characters. In particular, Paddy Rowan is remarkable in the central role of Adam, who we initially meet absconding from gaol and beating up a defenceless junk mail delivery guy for his bike and jacket. The fact that Rowan appears so at ease and convincing playing the role is alarming at first, because the prospect of spending a further 80 minutes in his company initially feels too much to bear. Adam goes on to do very bad things, things that will turn your stomach, but Rowan is just as skilful at elliciting the vulnerability of his character, and the flashbacks at least afford the audience the ability to understand at least, even if condoning them continues to prove justifiably elusive.
Long hopes to secure a word of mouth campaign from views and reviews that will gain Baby Brother a foothold on the festival circuit and ultimately a wider release from there. I really wish him all the best with it, because I feel that Baby Brother is a film that really ought to be seen. What Long has created here is a film that can address social issues in a language that audiences who are genuinely affected by them will want to watch. A raw, unflinching film that will linger long in the memory, what Long et al have achieved here from such humble resources is both astonishing and encouraging. If he can break into wider distribution with this then I have little hesitation in saying that he could be one to watch.
Keep an eye out for Baby Brother at a festival near you
