Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough headline an absurdist nightmare from Polish film-maker Jan Komasa, co-produced by Jerzy Skolimowski and Jeremy Thomas. It’s a movie that could have been made at any time in the past 50 years, with high-concept provocations and talking points that feel like something from the age of Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange or Ôshima’s Max Mon Amour, or even, indeed, Skolimowski’s The Shout.
In present day England, Tommy (played by Anson Boon) is a teenage kid completely obnoxious and out of control: clubbing and bingeing booze and coke, evidently paid for with the monetisation income from hugely successful social media streams which show him racing stolen cars with his similarly odious mates. But Tommy’s online profile has caught the disapproving eye of Chris (Graham), a middle-aged road-safety campaigner and family values enthusiast, who wears a wig and has high-up contacts in the police and Home Office.
When Tommy is staggering stupefied around the streets after another massive night, Chris kidnaps him and chains him up in the basement of his handsome country house, perhaps paid for with his wife’s money; this is Kathryn, a deeply depressed silent wraith of a woman played by Riseborough. With the help of a baton and Taser for punishment, and various treats and privileges for good behaviour – such as a longer chain so Tommy can reach the actual lavatory, rather than using the bucket – Chris is on a mission to train Tommy to be a good son to them, and an exemplary older brother to their 10-year-old boy Jonathan (Kit Rakusen), who at all times maintains a fixed smile and saucer-eyed expression of suppressed fear. In fact, the film’s most realistic moment of sociopathic cruelty is Jonathan maintaining that obedient smile, even as his eyes are brimming with tears, while Chris irritably tries to teach him algebra. But Tommy might yet befriend the couple’s exploited Macedonian cleaner (Monika Frajczyk).
In the film’s Kubrickian moments, Chris makes Tommy watch his shameful TikTok videos, but in a spirit of sentimental leniency allows him to sit down (with the manacle around his neck of course) to watch Ken Loach’s Kes, clearly believing he will be duly instructed by this story of how a kestrel being trained exalts and civilises both animal and delinquent boy. And Tommy duly starts to acclimatise to the new normal and Kathryn comes out of her shell. The movie’s ironies and cruelties clatter across the screen, but Komasa also allows the audience to consider who it is Chris really wants to train. There is something very theatrical about Good Boy – I can imagine this on the London West End stage. Perhaps it would be much less with a lesser cast: Graham and Riseborough execute the bland nastiness expertly.
Good Boy screened at the London film festival.
