Ray And Liz Photo: Courtesy of New York Film Festival
Ray And Liz, 1.45am, Tuesday, Film4
A textbook case of how vital production design can be to creating and sustaining the mood of a movie, Beck Rainford's work on Richard Billingham's film is so intense you can almost smell it. She recreates, alongside Billingham a snapshot of the bleak side of Thatcher's Britain, as he draws on his own childhood and photographic studies of his family to depict a dysfunctional family. Presented as a triptych, we see his alcoholic father Ray (Patrick Romer), in a framing device, elderly and alone after Liz (Deidre Kelly) has left him. The film then flashes back to two more periods in the family's life with the focus falling on Richard's little brother Jason - first seen as a toddler and then as an older child (when he is played by Joshua Millard-Lloyd...
Ray And Liz, 1.45am, Tuesday, Film4
A textbook case of how vital production design can be to creating and sustaining the mood of a movie, Beck Rainford's work on Richard Billingham's film is so intense you can almost smell it. She recreates, alongside Billingham a snapshot of the bleak side of Thatcher's Britain, as he draws on his own childhood and photographic studies of his family to depict a dysfunctional family. Presented as a triptych, we see his alcoholic father Ray (Patrick Romer), in a framing device, elderly and alone after Liz (Deidre Kelly) has left him. The film then flashes back to two more periods in the family's life with the focus falling on Richard's little brother Jason - first seen as a toddler and then as an older child (when he is played by Joshua Millard-Lloyd...
- 1/9/2023
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The first person we meet in “Ray & Liz” is elderly Ray (Patrick Romer). Alone in a tiny room, abandoned by his wife Liz (Deirdre Kelly), he has taken to his bed seemingly permanently, waking only long enough to drink as much as it takes to keep himself drunk. He keeps a photo of himself as a young man with his bride stuck to a mirror next to a religious pamphlet that delivers the only foreshadowing this film feels like giving: a Bible verse instructing children to “obey [their] parents in everything.”
“Ray & Liz,” Richard Billingham’s debut feature, punctuates its main action with visits to this room, with the rest of the quietly downcast story taking place during the 1980s, as Ray and Liz descend into poverty, despair, and alcoholism in a council flat outside of Birmingham, England. Their children — Richard and his younger brother Jason — are along for the ride,...
“Ray & Liz,” Richard Billingham’s debut feature, punctuates its main action with visits to this room, with the rest of the quietly downcast story taking place during the 1980s, as Ray and Liz descend into poverty, despair, and alcoholism in a council flat outside of Birmingham, England. Their children — Richard and his younger brother Jason — are along for the ride,...
- 7/19/2019
- by Dave White
- The Wrap
Turner Prize-nominated artist Richard Billingham turns his hand to filmmaking with an overwhelmingly personal, intricately observed depiction of his troubled upbringing and neglectful parents. This remarkably assured debut feature was born out of Billingham’s single-screen video artwork Ray and his acclaimed 1996 photography book Ray’s a Laugh, which captured his poverty-stricken domestic life with uncompromising honesty. Shot beautifully on 16mm, Ray & Liz proves just as candid and heralds Billingham as a unique cinematic voice.
The narrative unfurls through several vignettes and snapshots of Billingham’s childhood. We begin on an act that frames the other two set pieces – Ray (Patrick Romer) is a bedridden, old man whiling away the reminder of his life by staring out the window of his council flat and getting drunk by 9am on home-brewed beer. We then flashback to the early 80s where a younger Ray (Justin Salinger) and chain smoking Liz (Ella Smith...
The narrative unfurls through several vignettes and snapshots of Billingham’s childhood. We begin on an act that frames the other two set pieces – Ray (Patrick Romer) is a bedridden, old man whiling away the reminder of his life by staring out the window of his council flat and getting drunk by 9am on home-brewed beer. We then flashback to the early 80s where a younger Ray (Justin Salinger) and chain smoking Liz (Ella Smith...
- 3/8/2019
- by Luke Channell
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
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