Here is an episodic, enterprising subversion of the happy-ending romcom from actor-director Mercedes Grower that manages to overcome its microbudget origins thanks to some committed performances and snappy writing. It is by no means faultless, and some sections work better than others, but there’s some nice, affecting material here that allows some genuine empathy for its characters.
Brakes is dominated by a single, structural idea: it offers, in a series of short scenes, the final moments of a dozen or so relationships – from a middle-aged couple living in a fancy Marylebone flat (Kerry Fox and Roland Gift) to a comic-bizarre obsession after a one night stand in Barcelona (Julian Barratt and Oliver Maltman). The same relationships are then rewound for a parallel series of episodes, describing the events that brought them together in the first place. The result is to create an interestingly upside-down view of emotional connection and romantic love, where the beginnings and endings of each encounter are encoded in their DNA. It’s like watching Love Actually with a death clock.
The financial limitations are rather obvious: most of the film takes place in borrowed flats or easily obtainable public spaces (outside the National Theatre stage door, gentlemen’s conveniences, railway platforms). However, the film’s main strength is its ability to create contained, plausible realities for each of its relationships, even if one or two of them suffer from idiot-hipster gestures (Noel Fielding’s obsessive football-dribbling stands out). Grower maintains an impressive control over dramatic texture, ensuring suitable levels of contrast between episodes, as well as basic believability for each of them.
That’s not to say it’s not uneven: Fox, probably the most accomplished actor on view, doesn’t get much to work with; but, on the other hand, Kate Hardie and Paul McGann offer a raw honesty that delivers something of a shock to the system. Grower gives herself one of the more eye-catching roles as a skating rink employee rejected and then romanced (in Brakes’s backward logic) by Fielding; it’s bit of a messy performance, but typifies both the charm and scrappiness of her film.
