For all its literary pretensions, this tale of a young novelist adrift in London’s celebrity-infested nightlife is a soap bubble of hot air. Ryan Stevenson (Chris Mason) is a Liverpudlian scribe who has relocated to London in order to pen the follow up to his gritty first novel. His loathsome agent is lobbying for something “aspirational not miserable”, with an emphasis on cars, girls and clubbing. Director Marquand tries to have his cake and eat it, with lots of slow-motion shots of sexily gyrating beautiful people, combined with Ryan’s cutting voiceover reminding us how shallow it all is. Any film which uses the camera like a giant tongue with which to drool over the cast has no right to a position of moral superiority. Exchanges between Ryan and his douchey mates John (rapper Example) and Connor (Lucien Laviscount) are oddly stilted. It’s only when Ryan meets on-off girlfriend Anna (Hannah Britland) that Between Two Worlds feels grounded in anything resembling honesty.
