Late Night Shopping

Dir: Saul Metzstein

2001

***

Late Night Shopping was a low budget but likable 20 something drama and the sort of thing FilmFour Productions threw their money at quite a bit in the early part of the millennium. It was to be their downfall and indeed, British film in general took a hit with studios hell bent on churning out quantity instead of quality and green-lighting pretty much anything going. There are far worse films than Saul Metzstein’s debut but it’s no masterpiece. It’s a made for TV film at best, an overlong television drama that shouldn’t have lasted any longer than an hour, or should have been developed into a series. The premise is sound; Four friends all work graveyard shifts in various soul-killing jobs. Sean (Luke de Woolfson) works in a hospital, Vincent (James Lance) a supermarket, Jody (Kate Ashfield) a factory and Lenny (Enzo Cilenti) a call centre. They all meet up after work in the same café each morning to discuss life, each other and pop-culture in general. Sean hasn't seen his girlfriend for three weeks due to their different work hours and is beginning to wonder if she still lives in his apartment. Vincent is a serial womanizer. Lenny, formerly a writer of porn stories, can't pluck up the courage to ask out his attractive workmate Gail and Jody, unknown to the others, has been fired from her job, but still shows up after her "shift" every night to talk. The film follows each character separately until all their lives become entwined. The film ends with the whole gang going on a road trip in search of Sean’s girlfriend, who it turns out slept with Vincent. It isn’t until the end of the film, in a scene where Jody suggests their predicament is similar to The Wizard of Oz does the penny drop. The anxieties of the four friends can all be matched up to those of the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and Dorothy. It’s a clever premise and extremely watchable, I didn’t care for it much at the time but have become rather nostalgic for this kind of early 00s British drama. I fancied the pants off Kate Ashfield in her pre-Shaun of the Dead role and I really liked James Lance’s performance, particularly his monologue about his prize possession – a watch that once belonged to Errol Flynn. It’s a long forgotten film, the cast have all gone onto better things but it is a pleasant film worth revisiting, if only to remind oneself of what seems like a totally different era, even though it wasn’t that long ago.