Residents of a fictional Welsh community share stories and poems of their life in their seaside town.
This adaptation of Dylan Thomas’ ‘play for voices’ — the first since 1972 — is less brooding, more bawdy.
If there’s a blackly comic viewpoint, it’s tempered by Thomas’ saucy, seaside-postcard humour.
It is a tale infused with a melancholy yearning for lost loves, missed opportunities and happy dreams that are never likely to become reality. If nothing else Allen’s weird and wonderful curio allows us to see Under Milk Wood through fresh eyes and that’s not such a bad thing.
Without a unifying idea, or any considered appreciation of the text, this adaptation assumes the air of a strained community theatre project.
At least, even when the more wayward visual gambits don't quite work, Allen pays scrupulous attention to the writing. It may not be the recommendation that he is looking for but this is a film you can watch with your eyes closed and still enjoy.
Sustained engagement will likely depend on a prior fondness for the play.
Relentlessly hearty and doggedly committed to Rabelaisian rumpy pumpy, the film feels at times like an anarchic, over-vitaminised community project. Still, beneath the visual cacophony, there’s some nicely brash jazzy scoring by composer Mark Thomas.
Rhys Ifans and Kevin Allen on Under Milk Wood
Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Tuesday November 10, 2015, until Thursday November 12, 2015. More info: www.filmhousecinema.com
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