Bonus Track
Set in 2006 in West Yorkshire, Julia Jackman’s feature debut touches on nostalgia, teenage angst and indie pop with a gentle hand.
Desert island: Joe Anders
There is little more personal than selecting the songs most meaningful to you and then preserving that compilation on audio cassette, or even on a compact disc. And Julia Jackman’s feature directorial debut feels terribly personal indeed, painfully so at times. Before the days of Spotify playlists and, crucially, prior to social media (the film is set in 2006), spotty, blushing schoolchildren expressed their love through hand-picked cuts tapes – and endured the consequences in hushed school corridors. George Bobbin (Joe Anders) is more retiring than most, being sixteen, awkward and under-achieving. It would appear that he is accomplished at nothing, not in academia, not on the sports field, nor even in the playground. He is an embarrassment to his parents (Alison Sudol, Jack Davenport) and seems to exist in a mental no-man’s-land where he believes that pop stardom will solve all his future problems. If only he was good at music…
To the sounds of Franz Ferdinand, The Streets, The Cribs and Wheatus, this toe-curling dip into British nostalgia and adolescent angst hits all its notes with surprising authenticity. These sixteen-year-olds really look like sixteen-year-olds (complete with bum fluff), are of all shapes and sizes and of sullen dispositions. For many, the school years were a nightmare and Julia Jackman conjures well this rising panic in George’s life on the domestic front, along with the pressures of his school’s expectations and the gruesome girls who torment him, collectively ganging up to push him over the edge. Even the eternally optimistic year head (Susan Wokoma) can’t seem to find a suitable field for George to thrive in. And so George retreats deeper into his own malaise until a new boy (Samuel Small) arrives, who is something of a celebrity…
Joe Anders himself (the son of Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes) imparts a reflective presence, his character’s horror of life less a case of an innate unhappiness than a dread of constantly disappointing his parents and teachers. The film is strictly lo-fi but is a welcome antidote to the turbo-charged slickness of a Mean Girls or of the kind of high school romance that attempts to charm its audience out of the trees. Bonus Track never pushes its agenda, is naturally funny as well as being tender, raw, authentic and ultimately rather sweet and moving. Jack Davenport is good value as an adult version of his own son, although the Seattle-born Alison Sudol seems an odd choice to play George’s mother, with no reference made to why she frequently sounds American. While it never fully reaches the heights it has laid out for itself, the film constantly engages the attention, largely because Chris Hyson’s understated score never pushes any manipulative buttons. In a crowded playing field, Bonus Track manages to be its own animal without recourse to either exaggeration or sentimentality.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Joe Anders, Samuel Small, Susan Wokoma, Ellie Kendrick, Josh O’Connor, Ray Panthaki, Alison Sudol, Jack Davenport, Elle McCloskey, Ciara Southwood, Josh Cowdery, Roger Evans, Nina Wadia, Colin Salmon.
Dir Julia Jackman, Pro Stephanie Aspin, Helen Simmons and Campbell Beaton, Ex Pro Olly Alexander, Mike Gilbert and Josh O’Connor, Screenplay Mike Gilbert, from a story by Mike Gilbert and Josh O’Connor, Ph Jonas Mortensen, Pro Des Giorgia Lee Joseph, Ed Jason Rayton, Music Chris Hyson and Olly Alexander, Costumes Lex Wood.
Erebus Pictures/Screen Yorkshire/Lunapark Pictures/Quickfire Films/Fortune Films-Sky Cinema.
98 mins. UK. 2023. UK Rel: 1 June 2024. Cert. 15.
