The line between fact and fiction is thin to vanishing in this Liverpool-set experimental docudrama, a study of addiction and how it rumbles down through generations. It’s directed by visual artist Melanie Manchot and is being shown as a multiscreen installation in Cornwall as well as screening in cinemas. Manchot worked with a Liverpool recovery group, hiring members, with lived experience, as actors. At its worst the result has a bit of a workshop feel, stilted and a bit studied; there’s also expressionist dancing. But at its best, this is a painful, raw study of addiction, with a powerful, committed performance by Stephen Giddings.
Giddings plays himself (or a version of himself), a recovering alcoholic and aspiring actor up for the lead in a film; the character is called Tom, a bank cashier who had problems in the past with gambling. Tom has made a fresh start with girlfriend Sarah, who’s pregnant, and together they’re buying a flat – but Tom has started betting again, and alarmingly, he’s dipping into the bank funds at work.
We watch Stephen audition, rehearse, and share his life experience. There are also scenes from the film-within-a-film. Among the best is a horribly tense backroom card game in which Tom loses big time. (My only gripe was an appearance by the ex EastEnders actor Michelle Collins as a tough loan shark, giving a performance that feels more calibrated to a Guy Ritchie movie.)
The questions the film asks are important: about addiction and how it affects families. I wasn’t convinced it fully comes together and perhaps in the end it works best in a gallery space. Another layer of fact and fiction is the mention here and there of the real-life early 20th-century case of Thomas Goudie, jailed for embezzling almost £170,000 from the bank he worked at as a clerk in Liverpool. His arrest became the subject of the first ever police reconstruction filmed in 1901 – which you can watch for free on BFI Player.
Stephen is in UK cinemas from 26 April; the installation is at the Exchange, Newlyn, Cornwall from 5 May.
