Sweet Sixteen

The English film-maker Ken Loach continues to make excellent and deeply moving social-realist films with a great deal to say, and Sweet Sixteen is among the best. At the same time Loach proves that the genre need not be boring at all.

The title Sweet Sixteen is deeply ironic, for Liam is far from the prototype of a carefree teenager. He is a 15-year-old lad who has grown up far too fast. He feels obliged to take responsibility for his weak and irresponsible mother, who is soon to be released from prison. Since his mother's boyfriend Stan is an unpleasant drug dealer, Liam does everything he can to get a flat for her so that she can break free of the guy and perhaps avoid falling back into crime. Liam is thrown out of his stepfather's flat because he refuses to help smuggle drugs into the prison. Instead he moves in with his sister Chantelle, a single mother.

Liam is enterprising and ambitious, so together with his friend Pinball he cheats his stepfather and starts his own drug-dealing business. He rises in esteem, including with the local big-time gangster, but it costs him his friendship with Pinball, who is jealous of Liam's success. When his mother is released, even more problems lie in store. She cannot come to terms with the role of mother and goes back to Stan. In disappointment and rage Liam commits a terrible act.

It could have been so sad and bleak as to border on the unbearable, were it not for the film's liberating humour. There is always hope in Ken Loach's films, but experience shows that you should not get your hopes up too high. Social inheritance and a troubled environment do not give the characters many chances - not even a fighter like Liam.